Hoi Polloi Read Online Free PDF

to buckle under me. I can’t help him. I can’t make it down there to lend weight on the chain.
    “Hey little boss. Look at the little boss.” One of them is climbing the stairs. He laughs, head thrown back close enough to me that I see the black holes in his gums from having no front teeth. He gulps from a beer jug and has to grab the balustrade to steady himself. “What you going to do with that knife, little boss?” He is one step from me. Stab him, I roar in my head.
    But I haven’t stabbed him. I couldn’t stab him. I run and he follows up the stairs into the dim-lit guest hall, a shadow man in the dark with a high hori laugh like a boy. “Where are you, little boss?” he calls coming towards the kitchen. I huddle where the sacks of potatoes go under the sink. The heaving breath and tears in me are making too much noise. Surely he’ll find me. I no longer hold the knife. Where is it? I don’t know where it is. I’ve dropped it. If he knew I no longer held the knife he might just go away. Has he picked it up for himself?
    The kitchen-to-dining room door squeaks open. “Little boss. Little boss.”
    “Hey. Get out of there. Get out of there.” It’s Winks’ voice getting closer in the hall. The thud and heavy squeak of the door pushed wide. Heavy boots slap across lino. The tap-tap-tap of rawhide soles, Winks’ soles, pursues them.
    “Hey,” Winks bellows. “Hey.”
    I hear grunts, the thump of hands on bodies trying to grab a hold. The fire-escape door rattles, a pane of glass smashes. Then nothing but the blood-ocean sound of my palms squashing my ears deaf.
    I relax my hands and open my eyes. Bar noise from below and the farmy smell of hessian and potato soil seeps into me. A cold draught blows about the floor. I don’t want to leave my hiding place but it’s becoming chillier here by the second as if inside has suddenly become the outside. My feet have gone to sleep and my legs ache with cramp. I climb out onto my hands and knees and peep around the sink corner for any sign of Winks or the hori. No one. The fire-escape door is ajar and rocking on its hinges from an icy breeze. There—the knife’s silvery blade beside the Formica table. I tip-toe to collect it, put it back on the drawer. I run as fast as I can on tip-toes to the apartment, aim the key at the lock with trembling fingers and crawl past Heels and Winks’ room. Heels is talking angrily on the phone, “Why has no divvy van arrived yet? We pay our taxes and when we need police you people won’t do your job.”
    I get into bed and lie there, wide awake.
    Still wide awake. And now Winks has returned. He’s telling Heels something. He’s trying to keep his voice down. She talks that way too, not loud enough to be an argument but obviously more important than any argument. I can tell in their whispery voices a great worry, a panic. I slip out of bed, Craig Sherborne • 29 cup my hands to my ears and press against their door. She’s saying, “Leave him there” and “It will look like a fall.”
    He says, “I’m in trouble with this one. Jesus.”
    “We should drag him off the premises. Turf him into the street.”
    “You think?”
    She keeps asking him the same question—“What exactly happened?”—and he keeps giving the same answer and wishing it could be different. He keeps saying, “It was a lucky punch. It was a lucky punch.”
    I’ve worked out what they’re doing. They’re making a plan. It’s to do with the denim hori who was in the kitchen. Winks has punched him and the denim hori has fallen backwards down the fire-escape, all those steel steps, and he’s dead. Dead. He’s lying on the concrete where he landed and not breathing, not moving, and there’s no pulse. Maybe the police will treat it as a robbery, Winks says. The hori was drunk and lost his balance in the act of burglary.
    “Drag him off the premises,” Heels repeats. “Deny any knowledge. For Christ’s sake, you could go to jail