Read Even the Dogs: A Novel for Free Online

cans, his papers, his tobacco. Good job because it took him a lot of time and trouble to stand up and someone mostly had to help him. Big man like that. Drank all day and didn’t do anything else. Seemed like the deal was if people brought him food and drink they could hang out in his flat, and it seemed like a good enough deal. Brought him plenty of food enough. Never asked Danny no questions the first time Mike took him up there, and that was the way he liked it. Just about the only one who didn’t do gear, but never seemed bothered what anyone
     
    Jesus though. A man like that. Didn’t look ill the last time Danny had seen him. But the others must have seen him after that, must have noticed something was wrong. Had to find them and ask them, had to make sense of all
     
    Weren’t like Robert didn’t have people looking out for him. He did, he had all of us. Not like some of these other cunts, these ones who’ve got no one and are always looking over their shoulders. Like the old man in the wheelchair, getting taxed near enough every time he comes out the post office. Like that one that turned up at the soup run a couple of times, no one knew his name and he never spoke to no one and word was he was sleeping out in the woods. Wouldn’t catch Danny going out in the woods in the daytime let alone at night. Never know what’s going off in the woods, it’s all shadows and hiding places and furry fucking creatures running around after dark. Anything can happen. But some cunts have got no one and they’ve got to find somewhere to hide. But Robert had no one to hide from, he had all us lot looking out for him. It was a what was it an understanding. Weren’t it and
     
    Laura she couldn’t she said but
     
    Had to find
     
    Fuck
     
    The van drives quickly now, the men in the front run dry of conversation and impatient to be done, to be home, to be off the streets on a wind-cold empty day like this, and through the darkened windows we watch the city pass us by; long dark streets splashed with light, empty parks and flooded playing fields, boarded-up shops and fenced-off factory ruins, and we see Steve, almost, dimly, we see the place where Steve’s been staying, a boarded-up room above a shop with the birdshit and feathers scraped out and a mattress from a skip hauled in and the walls whitewashed with a tin of stolen paint. A light and a television running on power cut in from downstairs. The room kept tidy, always, and no rubbish left lying around but thrown out through the window into the yard. The yard full of cans and bottles and batteries and bits of scrap he’s brought back because it might be useful, because he’s got a plan to do the place up and claim squatter’s rights and make something of it. Car tyres and bike frames and planks of wood. Plant pots and cable and window-frames. A crowd of pigeons picking around in the corner of the yard, shifting at the sound of footsteps and flapping into the air as Danny pulls himself over the wall and falls awkwardly to the floor. He gets up again, wiping the filth from his hands and his coat, and he shouts up at the first-floor window. Steve! Steve! The pigeons swoop and circle overhead, settling on the sagging roof as Einstein barks and claws at the other side of the wall and Danny keeps shouting up. Steve it’s me! It’s Danny! Are you there, are you fucking there? His voice cracks, and he bends forward to hack and spit on the ground, his long bony hands resting on his knees, and he stays bent over like that for a moment, a long string of bile swinging from his mouth to the floor, and he straightens up and calls Steve’s name again. Steve where the
     
    None of the others ever knew where Steve stayed, apart from Ant who stayed with him now and again. Only reason Danny knew was he’d helped Steve back there one night, dragging him along the towpath when he should have known better and left him lying in the bushes until morning. One time when Ant was in the cells.