Lottery Boy Read Online Free PDF Page B

there. Maybe the bridge at the end of the river that opened up for the boats to go under. He didn’t have the nerve yet to travel that far away. He liked to stick to the patch he’d got to know. Along the Strand, up Kingsway, down Charing Cross and the Haymarket and then back across the river to the Eye was as far as Bully went. A lopsided square of roads, shops and offices that he had somehow in the last five and a half months decided was his territory, his own bit of turf.
    He was going to the Strand now. The punters would be about, fagging outside the theatre places, and he might pick up a couple of quid to top up his mobile. There were a lot of these theatre places along the Strand and he sometimes looked at the posters they put up and watched the lights flashing for the shows. Back at the flat, Phil, when he was wasted, used to talk about the
theatre of war
, but it wasn’t like one of these theatre places where they acted things out and did a song and dance for money. Phil said they shot each other instead.
    He wandered along with Jack, in a world of his own, thinking about what he would buy from the shops on his way back from Camelot in Watford. He wanted a games console – an Xbox, the new one, and a PlayStation, but not the Wii – that was for kids… He looked in a shop window at the dumb show on all the TVs. Yeah, and a big, big plasma 52 inch, maybe 62, maybe a hundred! No, better than that, he’d have a screen built into one of the walls… He would need walls for that though. So maybe he would have to get a place first for all this stuff he was going to buy.
    He heard a sharp whistle – the sort he had never learned to make, with two fingers in your back teeth.
    “Bully!”
    A couple of zombies outside the theatre place looked round, thinking something was up, but it was just his name. Bully for bulldog, like his dog – like some of his dog, anyway.
    “Bully, Bully! You all righ’!” The two Sammies came over, hanging off each other, laughing and falling about like they were in a three-legged race and close to coming last.
    Man Sammy bent down to make a fuss of Jack, the other Sammy, a big old lady one, kissing Bully on the lips.
    “You all righ’, love,” she said, draping one arm round him like she was fed up with holding it herself. Close up she looked older than last time he’d seen her, like she was her own sister. Bully smelled the drink, and her eyes were slow to look at him. He didn’t like drink. He’d tried it – course he had – but it tasted like medicine and why would he want to take medicine when there was nothing wrong with him?
    “We been Sunderlan’, haven’t we, Sam?” said the other Sammy.
    Man Sammy ignored her, playing with Jack, tickling her belly. “Bite me? You gunna bite me, eh? Who’s a nasty dog, eh? Who’s a nasty dog?”
    “D’you hitch?” Bully asked. He didn’t like it when Man Sammy said things like that to his dog like she was a bad dog.
    “On the coach, love.”
    He wondered how they got their money. Neither one of them did much begging as far as he could tell.
    “You seen Tiggs and Chris?” he asked. It was where they came from,
up north
, and he took it for granted that everyone that way sort of knew what everyone else was up to.
    “Nah. Dunno where they are. Up to their eyeballs in it, I expect…” Man Sammy put a finger to his eyelid and dragged it down so that Bully could see his whole eye shining in its socket.
    He heard a bell tinkling inside the theatre place and one or two zombies started doing a little twisty dance on their cigarettes whilst the rest headed back to their seats. Bully spread out on the empty steps and listened to the rest of what the two Sammies had to say. Then he told them about Janks.
    “He loves his taxin’, always, always … taxin’ us,” said Man Sammy.
    “Yeah, but it’s never you’s has to pay,” said the other Sammy, pulling a face, and Man Sammy told her to
shut it
and to keep it like that. And then