The Remains of My Estate
by Iain Rowan

Samuel Johnson wrote that the prospect of death concentrates the mind wonderfully. Much as I hate to be cruel about the man who created the English dictionary and made Scrabble a feasible proposition, I have to tell you: this is bullshit.

It has been seventy-eight days since a man wearing a spotted bow tie leant across his desk, slid his glasses back up his nose, sighed and said "I'm sorry, Mickey, but there's no doubt, no doubt at all, I am afraid." He gave me six to twelve months before my body ate itself from the inside out. Have I spent these precious last weeks of my existence on earth squeezing the last drops of juice from the fruit of life? Well, I don't know. I'm not altogether sure if smoking as much gear as I can afford and watching daytime TV counts. Call it laziness if you want, I prefer to think of it as a relaxed attitude to life. I saw a doctor talk about this on TV, between the makeover (a politician -- she went from grotesque to grotesque with tidier hair) and the cookery slot (something with eggs). Apparently I'm a type B personality. We take everything as it comes, greet it with a smile, never get worked up over things. A world apart from your neurotic Type A, snapping at all around him, blood pressure through the roof, everything in his life a cause of stress. It's a bad thing, the doctor said, to be a Type A person. It can lead to an early grave. Don't think that the irony of this has escaped me.

Still, I can hardly complain that my last days on this beautiful planet are going to be spent on a sink estate on the outskirts of a failing industrial city, surrounded by dirt and random acts of violence. The choices I've made have always been my own. Most of the estate had no choices, no chances. I had all that a good family could provide, but I wasted them all in the soft arms of my darling, my love, my one and only. It was an infatuation which lasted the better part of a decade, but twelve months ago we got divorced. No methadone, no help, just me in a room with a bucket and a twelve inch portable colour television that Welsh John stole from a second-hand shop full of previously stolen goods. It wasn't the best fun I've had, but I did it and I won. I was clean. I was unscathed -- no hepatitis, no HIV. And then a few months later I found out that I was going to die anyway. Don't think that the irony of this has escaped me either. I truly am the Alcatraz of the ironic. Nothing gets out of here alive.

It was seventy-eight days since I had been told I was dying, and I could feel the estate buzzing. Even though I spent more and more time in my flat, too tired to go out, I knew. I could hear it in the way the kids whooped and swooped along the walkways, I could hear it in the way the mothers shouted at the younger ones to get back inside this fucking flat NOW, I could hear it in the way the constant restless hum of the anthill had changed in pitch. Something was in the air. I shook out a handful of assorted painkillers -- well, what's the worst that can happen, I kill myself? -- and headed out the door.

I bumped into Welsh John on the landing. He's Welsh. His name's John. It may lack imagination but there's a certain elegant simplicity in the concept.

"Fucking okay, Mickey boy, how you doing?" John sounded drunk. He always did now, even when sober.

"Not so bad today, John, not so bad." It was what I said every day to everyone who asked. For the first day in a week, I almost meant it. "What's going on out there?"

He grinned, and I saw his tooth. "Yeah, you can always tell, can't you. You not know what's happening then?"

"I've not been out for a couple of days. Resting, like."

"Right, yeah, resting, okay. It's Billy Gilden's boy, Robbie. He's back on the estate."

"You're fucking joking."

"No word of a lie, boy was back on Tuesday you know, but word only got out last night, he's been laying low."

"And if word got out round the estate last night...."

"Yeah. The police will have known about a second later. That's why there's all the excitement. Word's out Robbie's leaving today, fucking off to Rotterdam, mate of his runs a bar there, so if they want to grab him it's got to be today. So, everyone's out to see a bit of a show, coz Robbie's said he'd rather kill one of them than go back inside. He won't you know, he's all bloody talk, seen Scarface too many fucking times, it's all to impress the kids, but it's got everyone all fired up. Wanting a spectacle, they all are. You having a walk about?"

"Yeah," I said. "Just thought I'd see how the land lies."

"You watch yourself then," John said, and he was genuinely concerned and I was genuinely touched by it. "I'd hang around and keep you company but I've got to see this gaffer of that site I spent a couple of weeks on down by the riverside, pulling insulation out of the walls. Turns out it's fucking asbestos, would you believe? I should have double for that, they didn't give me it then, so I'm going to see him now, tell him if he pays me proper I'll shut up and piss off, and if he doesn't I'll go to the fucking council. Can't afford to miss out, me and Sheila, we need the money pretty bad, you know."

"Walker?" I asked.

"Walker," John said. He went quiet for a moment, and then spat on the floor. "Still, got to go. You take care now Mickey boy, you take care and if I've got any cash come the weekend I'll drop you off a bit of blow like, keep you going."

I started to protest, but John was already gone, shuffling off down the landing in that lopsided way of his. The estate might look like hell on earth, but there are some decent people here. Everything's gone wrong for them -- and it always will go wrong, all their lives, but they are good people all the same, prepared to spend some of what little cash they have on an ex-junkie who had every chance in the world and blew it, pawned the silver spoon from his mouth at the first opportunity.

Walker. I'm a placid person, I try not to judge people. If you look hard enough, even vicious little tossers like Robbie Gilden have their good points, although I'll admit that I'm pushed to think of one off the top of my head. But Walker, he was the exception, he was a parasite that preyed on half the estate, the good and the bad alike, sucking everything out of them just so they could buy the kids some new clothes or stop the electric being cut off. Walker didn't live on the estate -- fuck no -- but it was his territory, his empire. He roamed the alleys and the corridors, the stairs and landings, everyone's lives imprisoned in neat little columns in his little black book, and Corrigan -- his muscle, dumb but vicious, a rabid buffalo -- never more than two paces from his side.

I limped out onto the concrete walkway that linked my stained concrete island to the next. It was the weary end of summer. The heat slumped unmoving over the ground, three steps was enough to break out into a sweat, and for once the litter stayed in its stinking piles in the corners without being whipped into spirals of filth by the whirlwinds that usually stalked the estate. Trouble weather. I'd slept badly for the last two nights, because of the clammy air that weighed heavy down on me and because of the sounds of trouble brewing, stolen cars spinning, the apathetic slump of the hot day brewing the tension of the night. Too hot, too airless for too long. And now Robbie Gilden was back, and everyone was waiting for the sirens.

If the boy had any sense, he'd have left the estate as soon as word got out, although I suppose if Robbie Gilden had any sense he wouldn't be Robbie Gilden. Not much stayed secret here for long, there was always someone eager to get the police off their back with a scrap of information. I felt sorry for Billy Gilden, a decent old man who had worked hard building cars, working hard building his family, only to see his factory close down and his son slouch into the second division dealing.

I leaned on the edge of the walkway and looked out over the courtyard below. A group of lads drifted across, laughing, smoking, swearing. One was Dean, son of my neighbour Alice. He had just turned twelve but already I'd found him lying in the stairwell, mumbling at the walls, stinking of glue and the piss that had soaked through his trousers. Now he was tagging on to the fifteen year olds, the cocks of the walk who had already been in and out of detention centres. Dean had a few rounds of community service to do before he'd get there, but he would, he would. Alice was being preyed on by that human blowfly Walker too, for the holiday she'd taken Dean on last year. First holiday he'd had in six years, first holiday since his dad had walked away. She'd paid for it four times over already, maybe more, and Walker still wasn't finished with her.

I crossed the walkway, and picked my way down the stairs at the other side. By the time I'd reached the bottom I was wet through with sweat and my legs were shaking. I sat down on the bottom step and skinned up. Chance to give myself a rest. Some days were better than others, some days I almost felt like my old self -- no, start again. Some days, despite the fact that I am dying, I felt better than my old self. But then my old self was a walking corpse much of the time and twice I'd been down at casualty, wandering on the edge of the abyss, the stuff either too pure or too badly cut, so maybe my new found health was not too much of a surprise. Today wasn't too bad, a few aches, a shortness of breath, but not too bad. I knew that a time was not far off when every day would be bad, and then every day after worse than the last. Taped inside the panels of my bath is the last heroin I ever bought. I bought it a couple of months ago, as much gear as I used to get through in a whole week when I had my habit. It's the velvet curtain that is going to fall across my stage when I decide that I can't go on again. It's my savings for the rainiest of days.

After a sit down and a smoke, I carried on through the estate towards the streets near the bypass, skirting round the war zone, the barely-populated blocks in the middle of the estate that served as shooting gallery and morgue and rat trap. I had just walked into the underpass beneath Clematis House -- I'm not joking, the whole estate was a floral tribute -- when a voice behind me called my name.

"Mickey Robbins. The one man Betty Ford Clinic. Nice to see you out and about."

I stopped walking but didn't turn around. I'd insult him when I could. But not too much. Walker wouldn't have bad dreams about making a dying man unable to walk or feed himself.

"Mr Walker. Thank you for the kind words, but I'm not interested in your financial services right now."

Walker laughed, and strolled round in front of me. I could still feel a completely silent, concentrated menace behind me. Corrigan.

"You're not interested? Don't insult me. I'm a businessman, Robbins, a successful businessman, and do you know how successful businessmen stay successful?"

I didn't answer, just looked at the sunlight raining gold into the entrance of the underpass.

"How stupid of me," he said. Jesus, he was predictable. The only thing worse than an amoral violent parasite is an amoral violent parasite who thinks that he is funny. "Of course you won't know how successful businessmen stay successful, will you, Robbins, because you've never known what success tastes like, have you? Successful businessmen don't stay successful by taking bad risks. And lending good money to dying ex-junkies is a bad risk. Terminal even."

Behind me, there was a noise like a faulty gas boiler trying to heat water. Corrigan laughing at the boss's bon mots. Trapped in an underpass with the bastard offspring of a cross between Cannon and Ball and the Kray twins, enough to make me I wish I had less time on this earth, not more. I was lucky though, because I was stoned. Straight, and I would have said something clever that would have earned me a punch in the kidneys from Corrigan, a casual kick in the head from Walker's Patrick Cox brogues when I fell over. Stoned, I thought of about three witty retorts but couldn't decide which of them to use, and then they all blurred together anyway. So I just said "Mmmmmm."

"Still," Walker said. "Much as I love talking to an educated man like yourself, I can't waste the day in this shithole. Places to go, debts to chase."

"People to threaten." Fuck. Where did that come from? But it didn't matter, Walker just laughed, made a shaking signal with his finger to the wheezing blackness behind me.

"The successful businessman's work is never done. Still, it's a living. And I like living. Bet you do too. Did, I mean. Shame then, considering."

I stood still until the footsteps crunched away over the rubbish that carpeted the underpass. Walker had always despised me. I had fuck all, he had lots. I had no future, he was probably saving for a place in Spain. But I was better than him, smarter than him, more than him. And he knew it. And he knew that I was aware that he knew it And that's why he hated me. Everyone on the estate feared him. Everyone on the estate hated him. But only I looked down on him.

Before I got within a hundred yards of Billy Gilden's house, I knew that I had missed the action. I've spent a lot of the last few months watching fuzzy repeats of Columbo on my little portable, and I've learnt all that there is to know about the art of detection. Let me tell you the clues that tipped me off that maybe, just maybe, Watson, the game was afoot.

First clue: the first breeze I had felt that day was from the police helicopter clattering overhead. It circled round and round like an inquisitive dragonfly. There were probably half a dozen kids leaning out of their windows with air-rifles, praying for it to come just that little bit lower.

Second clue: sirens. Lots and lots of sirens. Sirens coming from the east, sirens coming from the west, sirens having the good grace to let any bail absconders and wanted men or women on the estate -- and there were more of them than there were working men and women -- know that they should keep indoors, draw the curtains.

Third clue. The shaven-headed kid in a stained white tracksuit running back through the estate kicking at anything that smacked to him of authority -- bins, lampposts, bus stops -- shouting 'Cunts, the fucking cunts, they've fucking nicked Robbie, pigs, cunts, fucking pig cunts'.

I put all the elements of this puzzle together, and through a brilliant deductive leap, decided that it was probably time to go home. The sirens meant that they already had Robbie in the bag, no need for stealth now. He was probably already standing in front of the custody sergeant being booked in. All the police were doing now was keeping a lid on things until they could extricate themselves and let the estate get on with the business of tearing itself apart.

I felt sorry for Billy. I don't have any family -- thank christ I'd never ended up being a father, what an example I'd be, and the people whose blood I happened to share had disowned me back when what I needed was help -- but seeing your son go like that, dragged out of the house, knowing that his life was going to be that repeated: prison, out, dealing, prison, out, dealing. For a decent man like Billy, it must have been hard to take.

I was walking back along the corridor to my flat when Welsh John's door opened and Walker and Corrigan oozed out.

"You not dead yet?"

I ignored him, walked to my door no faster and no slower than I had been walking before. I could feel the stare on my back. I went into my flat, shutting the door behind me with the heel of my foot. I was tired now, and I felt low. It was a sadness that came more and more often these days, a sadness that puzzled me. I have no job, no money, nothing to do, no-one to love or be loved by. My friends are all people who are worse off than I am, trying to bring up kids or keep marriages together, while the Walkers and the Robbie Gildens and the kids who kick front doors in, the dealers and the junkies and the pimps and the multi-skilled, multi-tasking bastards who do a bit of everything, gnaw away at this place, tearing the heart of it out to throw at police cars, tearing the heart out of us to give themselves a buzz.

What have I got? Nothing. What can I expect? Nothing. What do I have to live for? Nothing. But sometimes I still sit on my couch and cry like a child and say to myself I don't want to do it, I don't want to die, I don't want to go, no, not yet. I've spent my life running away from the world, and now I don't want to let it go.

So I got stoned. I sat in front of the telly and watched something I couldn't follow from minute to minute, I pulled skins out and licked and stuck and lit and crumbled and folded and rolled and smoked and pulled and licked and on and on until everything was distant, behind plate glass, a play I'm only half-watching about characters I don't care about. It's not the same as my old habit, there's not that complete removal from the world, that sloughing off of the skin of worry and pain and fear, but I don't want to go back to that -- won't go back to that, it's a matter of pride -- and this is enough for me now.

Until I ran out of skins. Before, I was depressed, but after this I was just fucking angry. Forget morbid self-pity about my impending doom, this was now, this was urgent. I knew I'd bought another packet but I couldn't find it anywhere. Too soon to stop, not numb enough, not numb enough by half. I staggered out of my door, into the hot air of the evening. Welsh John would have been back with the money for Walker, and he always had skins, forever smoking those prison-thin rollies.

As I went out I bumped into Dean, letting himself in Alice's door. He smelt like a tin of cheap lager that someone had dropped their fag-ends in.

"All right Mickey."

"Dean," I mumbled, "how's your mum? Got any skins?"

"Nah. Dunno 'bout her, she's out with some bloke, haven't seen her since yesterday. You fucking heard what's happened? Cunts."

"What, Robbie Gilden? Yeah, I gathered."

"Robbie? Fuck Robbie. Billy. Cunts. There's going to be fucking trouble, you want to keep your head down tonight like, Mickey, it's kicking off, big style." Only a year out of primary school, only a year away from doing pictures of Jesus with coloured crayons, and he was talking gangsta tough.

"Billy? What about Billy?"

"Fucking police killed him, innit. Cunts."

"What? Dean, are you out of your fucking head again? What are you talking about?"

"Killed him, like I said. They smash through the fucking door to drag Robbie out, and there's a right scrap, Robbie gives the bastards as good as he gets, but then about a hundred pigs take him down and give him a right fucking kicking, bastards. Billy tries to pull them off, he gets dragged off by more of the bastards, two fucking minutes later he's dead, fucking heart attack or something they'll say, but they fucking killed him, all the same. Whole place is going to kick off, there's already been a scaffolding pole gone through a panda window, fucking good style."

"Jesus." Poor Billy. "Look Dean, chill, yeah? Stay out of the way, stop at home, have a smoke, keep out of the way--"

"Piss off, Mickey, I'm well up for this, going to be a fucking laugh. I'm just nipping in the flat for any milk bottles we've got, know what I mean?" I let the twelve year old General Molotov nip into his mummy's flat and walked down the corridor to Welsh John's.

I knew that something was wrong as soon as I saw that the door was still open. No-one leaves their doors open here, not for a minute. Even if most of what you own has been stolen, there's always something else to take. I knocked on the door, shouted, and when there was no reply I walked in. The narrow hallway still stank of Walker's aftershave. Expensive stuff, I'm sure, but it always smelled cheap on him. Like dabbing Chanel on dog shit.

Sheila was sitting at the cheap folding table in the kitchen, her face in her hands. She was making no sound, but I could tell by the spastic shiver of her shoulders that she was crying. The kitchen was a mess, shattered mugs on the floor, toaster cracked and sagging against one skirting board, the narrow worktop swept clean, everything on it dumped onto the floor by a casual arm.

"Oh, Sheila, what have they done?" I crouched down beside her, went to put a comforting hand on her but stopped myself, wondering what the last hand to touch her had felt like. I got the answer after a minute or so, when she coughed some phlegm back into her throat and raised her face out of her hands to look at me. Her left eye was nearly closed by the swelling, and the mark across her cheek was dirty, bruised, hand-sized. I noticed that her blouse had been torn open. She'd pulled it back together, but the missing buttons let it hang open enough to let me see the dark bruises, almost like a love bite. Bastards. What do you say? What can you say.

"Sheila, Sheila, Sheila." I said. "Don't cry. They're gone. Please, Sheila, I'm so sorry, please don't cry. John'll be back soon--"

She wailed, a horrible painful sound like a cat dying. "They've gone to find him, Mickey, they've gone to find him. He should have been here, he should have had the money, oh god, the stupid sod, he should have been here, he told them he would be here, all he had to do was pick the money up and come home, he should have been here. He'll have drunk it, that's where he'll be, staggering around some pub, when he should have been here, oh Mickey, he should have been here--"

"Maybe he got delayed down at the site, maybe they didn't have the money...."

She looked at me, and I couldn't finish the sentence. We both knew that she was right. John loved Sheila, really cared for her, but drink was his mistress, and after years of experience Sheila knew when he was being unfaithful.

"They're going to hurt him, Mickey, really bad. Walker said they're going to put him in the hospital to teach everyone on the estate a lesson about paying on time. Oh, Mickey, they're going to hurt my John, I don't care about what those bastards did to me but they're going to hurt my John." She started to cry again, every part of her face melting into grief and pain.

"I'll find him." I stood up, took a chance, slid a hand onto Sheila's shoulder. She flinched a little, but then put her hand on top, squeezed mine.

"And then what?"

"I don't know, Sheila, I don't know. I'll think of something. I'm supposed to be smart, remember, I'll think of something. I'll find John first, warn him off, get him to stay out of the way, then we'll see what we can do about the money, see, there must be something. I've got a bit of gear stashed away in the house, I could sell it, might keep them off his back for a day or two. Go to your sister's, Sheila, get off the estate in case they come back, it's all going to be fucking war here anyway, Billy Gilden's dead and the kids are going to tear the place apart."

Again the long look at me. "I don't care what those bastards do, Mickey. This is my home. I am not leaving my home. Not for Walker, not for those little thugs, not for anything."

I didn't know what to say. Half the country would probably look at Sheila Price with contempt, a jobless un-educated nothing married to a jobless un-educated alcoholic, living away her life in a crumbling flat, Sky telly on a bootleg card, Spanish gin out of the back of a white Transit. But half the country would shit themselves and run away if Walker knocked at their door, and here was Sheila, defiant, protecting what little she had. It might have been nothing, but it was her nothing.

"I'll find John," I said. "I'll find him." I had a pretty good idea where to look. Problem was, so did Walker, and he was at least an hour ahead of me. I left Sheila sitting in the wreck of her kitchen, went back to my flat for my keys, and walked out into an estate that was already going up in flames. I checked all the piss-stinking corridors leading into our block. Nothing. As I walked away a black BMW softly rolled around the corner. Bad news, because it was Walker. Good news, because it meant they were still looking for John. I decided to head for The Greyhound, the estate's only pub. An ugly grey blockhouse, it looked as if it were designed to survive a nuclear war. It was somehow reassuring to know that in the event of a global holocaust a place would still exist where survivors could buy drugs and fence stolen electrical equipment to the sound of an overstretched tape of half-remembered Eighties hits.

I had little hope of finding John in there -- it was the first place Walker would have tried -- but I was short of ideas. Hanging around outside the Greyhound was someone who would have seen John if anyone had. Would have seen two of him, probably. Pat Barratt was one of John's regular partners in drink, but where John was a good man brought low by alcohol, Pat was a sly little bastard by birth.

"Mickey, how you doing. You coming in for a drink then?" What Pat meant when he asked you in for a drink was that you went in and bought him one so he could hang around inside trying to scrounge more without the landlord throwing him out.

"Would love to Pat, another time, you know? I've got to find Welsh John, really got to find him. This is important. You seen him?"

Pat put on a look which I'm sure he thought was inscrutable but which made him look like a weasel. Well, more like a weasel.

"John, you're after. Now. Welsh John. My old friend. Well, maybe I have seen him, but maybe I haven't. That would all depend now, you see."

I wanted to hit him, but I didn't have the time or the energy. I dug into the front pocket of my jeans and dug out the crumpled five pound note that was supposed to be food for tomorrow. And the day after.

"No time to piss about, Pat. I need to know. Tell me and here's five quid for some meths."

"Cheeky bastard. That's not a very nice thing to say someone you're asking for information, not a nice thing at all, by rights I should tell you to piss off." But Pat's bloodshot eyes never moved from the money in my hand, and I just waited in silence for him to satisfy whatever ego he had left.

"Yeah, to piss off, by rights. But seeing as it's for John, and he's one of my oldest friends, and you say it's important, and me and John, we go back a long way--" his hand moved towards the money, but I lifted it so that it was out of his reach.

"So I have seen him, if you must know. Not here though, town, in the Miller's. He was buying. He'd got some compo money for something, I didn't listen what, but he'd stopped off to celebrate on the way home -- 'just one or two' he'd said, but he'd been there for hours, pissed as a fart and getting more so. I had to go, had to meet someone up here for a bit of business, you know, bit of important business that's no concern of yours, but important it is, and -"

"John." It must have been important business to drag Pat away from John flashing his money in a pub.

"Eh? Oh, John. I left him behind in the Miller's, still buying drinks like he'd won the fucking pools. He said he was going to have one more for the road and then go home to see Sheila. Dutch courage he said, needed one more before he went home. Sheila was probably waiting for the money to buy some fucking dress or something, I reckon, not like she ever works mind, and she has the fucking cheek to tell him not to spend his money on a couple of drinks with his mates -- hey, you promised--"

I had stuffed the fiver back into my pocket and turned to walk away. Pat let fly with every swear word he knew and was still going when I turned the corner. If John had been at the Miller's Arms and was heading home then he'd come on to the estate past the community centre, in between Rose House and Gardenia House, across the war zone and then into our block through the service stairs at the back. Like junkies, alcoholics were creatures of habit. In every sense.

The police helicopter clattered overhead, a finger of white light poking down into the anthill, trying to stir things up. I had to intercept John down by the community centre, before he got onto the estate. To get there, I walked through hell. No sulphur, just the stink of petrol and burning plastic, but otherwise the estate fitted the traditional descriptions of the underworld. Most of the streets were in darkness, which was nothing new, but every now and then the dirty concrete of the buildings were warmed orange by the guttering flames of a still-burning car. Sirens came and went, echoing through the concrete canyons, and I could hear shouting, the way you can when you're near a football ground and a goal goes in.

I took a short-cut through the war zone. Battles were still raging all over the estate, but the war zone, of all places, was quiet. No-one wanted to fight over it, no-one wanted to be in it. The war zone was a piece of ground neither the bad boys nor the law cared about. It had been the site of Lily House, the first of the blocks to be built, but as early as the seventies the appalling shortcuts that had been taken in the building were apparent and after a gas explosion the council took the chance to pull it down.

The plot had stayed a wasteland for a few years, and then a programme of progressive housing began -- not the squat slabs of the flats, but small family homes, communal spaces, little bits of garden. Nice enough, from all accounts, but these little oases were surrounded on all sides by hulking concrete crags. Their gardens were overlooked by the pissed-up kids on the walkways of Iris, their small, neat bedrooms rattled to the noise of the stolen cars being paraded up and down the access road. The council built them well enough, but no-one wanted to come and live in them. In the end they were just used for rehousing problem families from elsewhere off the estate, easy solutions to neighbourly disputes for a harried planning officer, and within ten years of their construction they were falling apart. Now none were permanently occupied.

The houses had been gutted for anything that had ever been of any value. Some of them didn't have floors any more -- somewhere someone would express the need for some floorboards, and a day later their need was met for a little bit of cash. Younger kids sniffed glue in them, older kids chased the dragon in them, local tarts led their unwary punters to them, either for ten minutes of unsatisfying sex on a mattress that smelt like piss -- unsurprisingly, as some smackhead had probably just pissed on it -- or into the arms of their pimps who spoke quietly in the darkened rooms and let what little light there was reflect off the blades of the knives they held. I'd spent my time in the war zone. Now I skirted past it.

I walked around the corner of Rose House and right into a dozen police, all silent faceless threat in their black riot gear. Twelve visors turned to look at me, each one reflecting the night. I held my hands up in what I hoped was a conciliatory gesture, tried my best to look like an innocent civilian caught up in someone else's trouble. Someone from off the estate, in other words. One of the helmets said "You" and started to clank towards me. A burning star grew in the sky behind them, turned end over end in the air, and then splashed fire all over the ground. One of the policeman beat at flames on his trousers, and out of the darkness beyond came voices laughing, jeering. I took advantage of the confusion and ducked back around the corner. I would have to go the long way through the alley that ran around the side of Rose House.

Just before I reached the alley a red Fiesta screamed past, horn blasting. It did a handbrake turn, rubber melting on to the road. The car span once, twice, three times and then what was left of the tyres gripped and it accelerated away, back into the darkness. Through the broken driver's window I had seen Dean, wired, exultant. I turned into the alley and saw a figure staggering towards me from the other end, weaving along as if there were a precisely marked winding path that only he could see. Welsh John. I shouted and started to hurry towards him, and then one of the shadows in the alley moved and there was a terrible solid pain in my chest and I hit the wall and slid down it like rain down a window.

"Fuck off, junkie scum," Corrigan said mildly, and lumbered down the alley towards John.

"Ah, the knight in shining armour, how sweet," said another shadow, and then Walker kicked me just behind the ear, the leather of his shoe skidding across the back of my neck, tearing the skin. "Stay out of my business, or your short life will be even shorter. I won't be telling you this again."

Something at the far end of the alley was on fire and the air was acrid and full of shouts and fear. This must be what war feels like, I thought. I staggered to my feet and saw that Corrigan had John up against the wall, was holding him there while Walker gave him the lecture. Once the lecture finished, then the beating would start. Nothing I could do to stop them, not one half-dead ex-junkie. Corrigan would swat me away like a bothersome gnat.

I ran back out of the alley and around the corner. Most of the police were moving in a steady group across the road, riot shields held above their heads. Three had stayed where I had first run into them. They were talking into crackling radios and looking at a half-folded map. Fucking tourists.

"Hey!" I shouted. "Down here. Someone's getting half-kicked to death."

One of them looked up at me, for just a moment. "Piss off."

"He's one of your lot -- he's a fucking plainclothes. They've got a fucking samurai sword and everything, they're going to do him."

Visors looked at each other for a moment, flies conferring over lunch, then the three of them ran towards the alley, batons up. I shuffled after them, still fighting for breath after Corrigan's punch. John was on the floor now. Corrigan kicked him, kicked him again, and then raised his foot for a slow, deliberate stamp. The police shouted and Walker sprinted away down the alley. Corrigan turned to face the policemen. The first of them flailed wildly with his baton and Corrigan just caught his arm, slammed him round into the wall of the alley, then dropped him to the floor in a heap. The second policeman landed a blow in Corrigan's gut but it didn't seem to bother him at all. Corrigan swung a punch, but the copper had put so much force into his attack that he fell over, and Corrigan's fist swung harmlessly above his head. Then it was all over. The last policeman held his hand up to Corrigan's face and something hissed. The big man bellowed with pain and started charging from side to side, his hands clasped to his eyes, hoping to force his way through. The copper on the floor did Corrigan's kneecap with his baton, and when Corrigan fell over the one who had sprayed the CS started whaling in, Rodney King style. I'd seen enough. Corrigan was taken out, John was safe, for now. But Walker had gone, and I had a feeling that he would know exactly why the police had turned up at that moment.

I headed in the opposite direction to Walker. Not that it made much difference; sooner or later he would come for me. It didn't really matter if I was sitting in my flat when the door went flying off its hinges, or was caught out on the estate, the end result would be the same. By the time I had reached my block I had decided that it was inevitable that he would come tonight. Walker was nothing more than a thug, a Robbie Gilden in a smart suit. He wasn't sophisticated enough to wait for revenge. Walker would come tonight, take advantage of the chaos on the estate. Tonight. Still, I thought, look on the bright side, it wasn't as if I had much planned for my old age.

There was no sign of him when I got back to my flat. It would take him some time to circle around the outside of the estate so I had a chance to do this my way. I let myself into the flat, ripped the panel from the side of the bath and pulled out the supply I had been saving for the end of it all. Maybe that was just going to be sooner than I thought. Small ziplock bag of powder, clean syringe and needle from the exchange -- now there's a laugh, mustn't be unhygienic when one commits suicide. Still, I never shared my needles when I was an addict, and the habit of a lifetime was hard to break. Habits. I stuffed the works into my pocket and headed straight back out of the flat.

The corridor was still empty. One fluorescent light twitched and hummed. I stopped at the door next to mine and knocked. When Alice opened the door as far as the chain would allow and saw that it was me she smiled but could not hide her disappointment.

"I thought it was Dean. I hate him being out with all this going on, I keep thinking he's -- I keep worrying he's--"

"I saw him, Alice," I said, "other side of the estate, less than half an hour ago. He was fine. Don't worry."

"Thanks, Mickey. But I will worry until he's back in his bed. He's only a boy, you know, my boy."

"Yeah, I understand. He'll be OK, he's a smart kid. Look Alice, I've got to go. Walker's looking for me."

"That bastard. Thought you were the only one on the estate that didn't owe him?"

"I don't. But I suspect that's not the way he sees it now. But anyway, he's going to come here and ask where I am. Don't give him any grief Alice, just tell him. Tell him I've gone to the war zone. Tell him I've gone there to score and shoot up."

"Oh, Mickey, no."

"Alice, just tell him that, please, just that, just like I said it, and nothing else. For me. Please."

"If I have to. You take care, Mickey. My Dean looks up to you, you know."

Jesus. Just when I thought things couldn't get any worse. I went down the stairs as fast as I could, before Walker turned up and the whole thing ended in some badly-lit piss-stinking stairwell.

I was just about to walk into the alley between Hyacinth and Iris when I heard the sound of running feet on one of the walkways above me. I looked up and saw Walker, moving fast towards the stairwell. I had three floors advantage on him. The police helicopter fizzed low over the other side of the estate. A firework shot up past it to the sound of cheers and exploded harmlessly high above, petals of green and gold falling gracefully from the night sky. I ran down the alley, pain in my stomach, pain in my legs, pain in my lungs. I rounded the corner and the war zone grinned at me with its stumpy and uneven brick teeth.

I was into the first house before Walker had come out of the alley. That bought me more time, but not much. I staggered through the rooms in the dark, picking my way over piles of rubble, trying to avoid the sudden gaping holes in the floor. The kitchen wall had been kicked through and a low arch led into the next house. I scraped through into the next and kept going, scrambled over fallen joists into the front room, down through the hole in the floor and then I crawled over cigarette ends and the used condoms that lay everywhere like squashed slugs, crawled through the damp and into the floorspace of the third house along, hoping that this rat run still worked, that I wasn't trapped there, about to die under the floor in the dirtiest place in the most derelict part of this whole ruined estate. Then there was a gap in the floorboards, and I could pull myself up and into space. I could hear noises in the adjoining houses, the clatter of feet. I found what was left of the stairs and dragged myself up.

My whole body ached, and strange things were happening to my peripheral vision, as if the whole world was slipping and sliding away from me. Your body will get weaker, my consultant had said. You will have to rest and take life very easy. I'm not entirely sure that this was what he had in mind. I got to the back bedroom, the farthest point from where Walker might enter the house, avoided the holes that gaped in the floor, and slid down a wall until the floor stopped me from falling any farther. All I wanted to do was to lie down, curl up and go to sleep. What stopped me was the desire not to give Walker the satisfaction of finding me like that. I wanted to do this my way.

I have never had control over my life. I gave my it up to heroin, and it danced me on silken strings for years and years. When I finally wrestled my destiny away from the drug, the cancer stole in and took it away again. Now, for once, I was going to be master of my own fate. As footsteps thudded through the other houses I pulled out the bag of heroin and my works, and began to cook. The flames from my Bic danced shadows around the room, and despite the devastation, despite the rot, it made it look warm and homely. A good place to end it, for things to come to a close.

* * *

I was right, the bedroom was the last place in the house that Walker checked. He steamed in through the door, kicking it open, but when he saw me he slowed down. Hurry over, time to relax, time to play. He brushed at his suit, smacking brick dust from its sleeves with sharp little chops of his hand.

"Once junkie scum, always junkie scum. I think this suit is ruined, you know. Paul Smith, it is." Walker took two quick steps forward and swung a foot at my face. I jerked my head back and turned it to the side, and the kick skidded over my face and cracked into my nose instead of splitting my head in two. "Paul fucking Smith. And it's been ruined, by the same little dead man junkie that got my employee arrested, and who's tried his best to make a fucking laughing stock out of me."

He kicked again. This time his foot connected hard with my leg and fingers of pain grabbed me and squeezed me and didn't want to let go. "And now he's crawled into this shithole, like a rat, a rat crawling back to its nest, to shoot himself full of smack and hope that I won't find him, well, junkie, I have found you."

Another kick, another wave of pain. The room smelt of decaying flowers, and I didn't know why.

"I don't care if you're dying anyway, you'll still want to live. People always want to live. You're still going to beg me not to kill you, and you know what, junkie shit?" Kick. "I'm still going to do it. And you know what, junkie shit?" Kick. "They'll probably never even find your body because no-one will be bothered to look for a nothing like you." Kick. "And you know what, junkie shit? Even if they do find you, they won't give a fuck. No-one will give a fuck. And do you know why, junkie shit?" He bent and grabbed my collar, pulled me to my feet and stuck his face two inches in front of mine. I could smell the rotting flowers even more strongly now, and I realised that it was his aftershave.

"I said, do you know why no-one will give a fuck, junkie shit?" He let go of my collar with one hand, and used the back of it to slap me across the face, a contemptuous, mocking slap. It hit my top lip so hard against my teeth that it tore, and blood started to fill my mouth.

"Why?"

He grinned. He had a piece of meat stuck in his teeth.

"Because you are worth the same dead as you are alive. Fuck all."

"Yes," I said. "But I'm still better than you," and I pulled my hand from behind me, punched upward between Walker's arms, and stuck the syringe into the flesh of his neck, using my palm to force the plunger down as it went into him, giving him the full load, everything that I had been saving for my final goodbye.

Walker bellowed and hit out at me with one hand, the other grabbing at his throat. I fell but pushed with my foot against the wall and sent myself skidding a little further across the floor, and as Walker stamped down hard with his foot he missed my head and caught his foot in one of the splintered holes in the floor. I had around five minutes before the heroin killed him. If I'd managed to hit a vein he would have had less than a minute. But I wasn't that accurate, or that lucky, so it would have gone into muscle or under the skin, and that left at least five minutes for him to beat me to death. I kept moving, dragging myself forward with my hands, trying to put distance between us, thinking that I might be able to dodge past him, make the stairs, anything but die on the floor in that room.

Walker threw the syringe to one side and jumped towards me but his foot was still caught in the hole in the floor and he twisted and fell. His head hit the floor so hard that I felt the floorboard under me lift. He lay still for a few seconds and then got up again and stood for a moment shaking his head, sending little droplets of blood flying about the room. He said "What?" in a stupid slow voice, and then fell again. He lay completely still for a while and then tried to lift himself with his arms. There was a horrible noise, like a iron manhole cover being dragged over concrete, and then he vomited a great pool of bile. His arms gave way underneath him and he collapsed face first into it. Vomit rattled in his throat as he tried to breathe, and his feet rattled and drummed on the floor.

I dragged myself to my feet, holding my breath. The stink of flowers and vomit made my head spin. I stepped over Walker and looked around the room. There, the syringe. I picked it up. The needle had snapped off in Walker's throat, but I didn't care about that. I leant against the wall by the window and waited for the formless jerky movements behind me to stop. When they did, I pulled a piece of loose wood from the door frame, slid it under Walker and used it as a lever to turn him over. His body fell over itself in that clumsy way that dead things have. I reached inside his jacket, and found it. The black book. Every name, every address, every debt, every life he owned. In the opposite pocket, his wallet. Today was collection day. There was over a thousand pounds in cash. I stuffed the cash into the front pocket of my jeans, and the syringe, book and wallet into a back pocket. Then I blew Walker's body a kiss and limped away.

I didn't have to walk far to find a car that was still burning. I tossed the syringe and the wallet in, ripped the black book in half and then threw that in to the flames as well. Little flakes of ash flew up to the sky, snow in reverse. I doubted that the police could connect me to Walker's death, and if they did, what exactly would happen to me? A life sentence? People spent longer inside than that for nicking bottles of scotch from the off-licence. I was very tired, and I hurt, and wanted very much to be back in my own flat, my own bed, the few familiar things that surrounded me like family.

I shuffled back towards home. I could use the money fly out to somewhere hot and cheap, rent a small room, spend the last months of my life in a lazy, sunny paradise. The estate seemed to be calming down now, the helicopter had hummed away to another part of the town and the sirens wailed less often. I turned at the top of the stairs and looked out over the flats and streets and alleys, the places where my choices had led me. Where I had lived my life -- most of my life -- thinking that one day I would be somewhere else, do something else, not realising that this would be all there was. All there ever was. No changing that now. Besides, the programmes on the TV abroad would be rubbish. I walked wearily down the corridor, split the wad of notes roughly in half, slid one pile under John and Sheila's door, one pile under Alice's, and then let myself into my flat, my place, my home.

IAIN ROWAN lives in the north-east of England, near the sea, but not yet near enough, and earns his living in the career equivalent of an Escher painting. He writes in a variety of genres and his work has appeared (or will be appearing) in publications such as Black Gate, the Darkness Rising and Songs From Dead Singers anthologies, the Thackery T. Lambshead Pocket Guide to Eccentric & Discredited Diseases, Plots With Guns and Shots magazine. Iain is a member of Storyville. He can be contacted at e@reynir.co.uk.

Copyright (c) 2002 Iain Rowan

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