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Spike to the garage, and when he stopped outside the door and tapped the side of his nose, I said, “What’s up?”
    “This is up,” and he pushed the door open and I stepped inside. I stepped inside, looked up, looked down and my blood flushed. “Oh fuck, Spike.”
    “I told you.”
    “Oh fuck…”
    He laughed.
    “You… you told me what?”
    “That one day I’d score.”
    “You fucking idiot.”
    Smoke was hanging from the rafters of the garage.
    “Spike…”
    Hundreds of plants.
    “You didn’t…”
    It must have been hundreds. Maybe it was a thousand.
    “I didn’t what?”
    More? Two thousand? I couldn’t tell. I didn’t want to tell. I wanted to close my eyes, open them again and the plants wouldn’t be there. I said, “You didn’t do what I think you’ve done.”
    “Tell me what you think I did.”
    “You stole that bloke’s crop.”
    Spike looked at me, and his stupid head nodded at me, like it was independent of the rest of his body or lost in Nepal. Mountains could have moved, climbers cried and yaks could have spoken the words of their own gods, but Spike’s head would not have stopped nodding.
    “Oh yes,” he said. “All of it.”
    “Mum…” I said, and I let the word hang in the air for a moment. “My mum was right, Spike. She was fucking right.”

‌ 6
    Stupidity is as stupid weeps, and as weeping leaves the broken-hearted on a carousel of another’s making, so stupid speaks to itself in a language it cannot spell. I stared up at the smoke, and for minutes I didn’t know what to say. What could I say? Words come, words break and all they leave are shards. Broken things swallowed by the earth and dug up centuries later, brushed off, studied, valued, put in glass cases. Stared at by bored kids. Wondered at by dreamers. The things I wanted to say queued up in my head and pushed against my memory, but I couldn’t let them out. It was like I knew what was going to happen already, like I could see into the future, see the ropes, the blades, the pain and the screaming in a wood, and all I could do was stand and stare and look at a garage strung with rows of plants and the smell of the plants – and the reckoning.
    And the reckoning. I thought about the reckoning. I could feel it there, feel it turning and twisting in the air, and I could hear it whispering. It was certain of its place in the scheme and the story and Spike’s life, and although it was impatient it could wait. It could wait as long as it wanted, as long as it took, even as long as the stars shone and tumbled in the sky.
    I said, “Oh fuck, Spike.”
    He didn’t look at me. “Brilliant, isn’t it?”
    “Yeah. Fucking brilliant. You’re a genius.”
    “I know…”
    “What did you do?” I said, and he laughed.
    “My ship came in.”
    “Yeah. HMS Fuck-Up.”
    He didn’t stop laughing. “Fuck you.”
    “Yeah?”
    “This is what I’ve been waiting for. I reckon I’ve got twenty grand’s worth here.”
    “Twenty grand…”
    “At least. Maybe more.”
    “And more trouble than you can imagine, Spike.”
    “Trouble?”
    “Yeah.”
    “And how’s that? Only you and I know about it, and you’re not going to say anything, are you?”
    “Are you kidding? Any money you like you’ll have a couple of pints, start bragging about it and before you know it…”
    “I’m saying nothing.”
    “And I’m the Pope. I’m the fucking Pope and I’ve got a balcony the size of your house.”
    “Have you?”
    “I’ll put money on it.”
    He shrugged. “This time next week I won’t need any of your money.”
    Right then I just wanted to hit him. I wanted to hit him hard, walk out of the garage and not go back, get on my bike and ride as fast as I could to some distant place where no one knew my name. Somewhere like an island in Scotland. Hole up in a rented house on the edge of a quiet village, wait for the mayhem to go away, wait for however long it took. Stare from a top-floor window at a place I didn’t