Not Dead Enough

city like a chameleon. It was the uniform of his gang, the WBC – Well Big Crew – a rival gang to the long-established TMC – Team Massive Crew. They weren’t as vicious as the TMC, whose initiation rites were rumoured to involve either beating up a copper, raping a woman or stabbing an innocent stranger, but WBC liked to give off a menacing image. They hung around shopping areas, their hoods up, stealing anything that was readily to hand, mugging anyone who was stupid enough to get isolated, and they spent the money mostly on alcohol and drugs. He was too old for the gang now, they were mostly teenagers, but he still wore the clothes, liking the feeling of belonging to something.
    Skunk’s head was shaven – by Bethany each time she came by – and there was a narrow, uneven stripe of hair running from below the centre of his lower lip to the base of his chin. Bethany liked it, told him it made him look mysterious, particularly with his purple sunglasses.
    But he didn’t look in mirrors that much. He used to stare at himself for hours, as a small boy, trying not to be ugly, trying to convince himself that he wasn’t as ugly as his mother and his brother told him. Now he didn’t care any more. He’d done fine with the girls. Sometimes his face scared him now, it was so dry, blistered, emaciated. It looked like it had been shoehorned over the skull bones beneath.
    His body was rotting – you didn’t need to be a rocket scientist to figure that one out. It wasn’t the drugs, it was the impurities crooked suppliers mixed with them that destroyed you. Most days his head swam as if he had flu, as if he was living in a permanent heat haze one moment and winter fog the next. His memory was crap; he wasn’t able to concentrate long enough to watch any film or TV show all the way through. Ulcers kept breaking out on his body. He couldn’t hold food down. He lost track of the time. Some days he couldn’t even remember how old he was.
    Twenty-four, he thought; or thereabouts. He’d meant to ask his brother, when he phoned him in Australia last night, but that hadn’t worked out.
    It was his brother, three years older and a foot taller, who had first called him Skunk, and he’d quite liked it. Skunks were mean, feral creatures. They slunk about, they had their defences. You didn’t mess with a skunk.
    Cars had been his thing in his teens. He discovered, without really thinking about it, that he could steal cars, easily. And when word got out that he could nick any car anyone wanted, he suddenly found he had friends. He’d been arrested twice, the first time put on probation and banned from driving, even though he was too young to have a licence, and the second time, aggravated by an assault, he’d been sent to a young offenders’ institute for a year.
    And now this afternoon, on that damp sheet of paper folded in his pocket, was an order for another car. A new-shape Audi A4 convertible, automatic, low mileage, metallic blue, silver or black.
    He stopped to take a breath, and dark, undefined fear suddenly rolled through him, drawing all the heat of the day away from him, leaving him feeling as if he had suddenly walked into a deep-freeze. His skin crawled again, the way it had done earlier, as if a million termites were swarming over it.
    He saw the phone booth. Needed that booth. Needed that hit to get his focus, his equilibrium. He stepped into it, and the effort of pulling the heavy door left him gasping for breath. Shit . He leaned against the wall of the booth, in the airless heat, feeling dizzy, his legs buckling under him. He grabbed the phone, steadying himself with one hand, dug a coin from his pocket and put it in the slot, then dialled Joe’s number.
    ‘It’s Wayne Rooney,’ he said, talking quietly as if someone might overhear him. ‘I’m here.’
    ‘Give me your number. I’m going to call you back.’
    Skunk waited, getting nervous. After several minutes, it finally rang. A new set of instructions. Shit, Joe was getting more paranoid every day. Or had watched too many Bond movies.
    He left the booth, walked about fifty yards up the street, then stopped and stared in the window of a shop that cut foam rubber to order, as he had been instructed.
    The two police officers sipped their cold coffees. The shorter, burly one, whose name was Paul Packer, gripped his cup by looping his middle finger through the handle. Eight years ago, the top of his right-hand index finger had been bitten off