The City Trap by John Dalton Page A

said he was looking at a juvenile pigeon, but he couldn’t. Suddenly, the whole tree began to sweat white flakes of ash or snow. His brain, his
body, they just seemed to close down and he was paralysed. Only his eyes existed, floating, full of flakes of white and straining to see the bird’s eye that drifted further away. He
must’ve passed out then for a moment and when he awoke he found himself sitting on the ground, sweating, shaking and very scared. But Jerry got himself up with the bird still watching.
‘F-F-Fuck you!’ he cried, then staggered desperately, angrily the last few yards home.
    * * *
    A gun might have come in handy where Des was. Many of the thirty-year-old buildings looked close to collapse. On the far side of the road, all the flats and maisonettes that sat
behind half-mature trees were grilled over with steel mesh. On the corner of a side street, a bunch of surly youths gave Des, the stranger, the once-over, like customs officers checking for illegal
immigrants. Des merely sneered back and clenched his fists. It was proving a hard job to find Gary Marlow’s pad. Half the road signs were missing or had been daubed illegible. Many of the
little blocks of flats seemed to hide unmarked down alleyways. He had yet to see a friendly face he could ask.
    The road he tramped along dipped down and he came to a bridge over a stream. Some joyriders had ditched a car into the grey, polluted waters. A hefty biker-type was directing a gang of kids to
strip it of spare parts. Des took a left turn along a drive that led to another complex of boxes. As he walked, he almost dived into the stream as a ferocious Alsatian reared up above a garden
fence and barked wildly. Finally, Des did find Gary’s pad. Kicking his way through empty cans of lighter fuel, he ran up cold concrete steps and found the number of the door he’d been
searching for. It had been kicked wide open.
    Des entered cautiously. The heat of the day, though waning on the outside, was still intense within the flat. Smells of burnt debris mingled with those of piss and shit. There was no one in the
place and not much left to make it a place at all. As he sneaked his way round, Des saw that the kitchen had lost its cabinets, cooker and fridge. The bathroom was minus its toilet and the bath had
been smashed up. The living room was bare, bar a broken chair and a forlorn lampshade. Des began to sag. He wiped the sweat off his face and felt the frustrations rise within him. It seemed
appropriate to kick the wall. He did and his foot went six inches in.
    The last place to check was the bedroom. This was where the burning smell came from; the bed itself was a two-foot hole of charred stuffing. Des entered. Syringes and silver foil littered the
floor. The cupboards here were built in but they too had been smashed. Clothes, magazines and other rubbish had spewed out around the bed to be kicked and trampled on. Des picked up a splintered
piece of wood, sat on the bed and then began to prod around the rubbish. There was practically nothing there of significance. Male fashion mags and soft porn, broken CDs and slivers of mirror
mingled with the mud-stained tiles and underwear. Des only found one thing, a torn triangular third of a black and white photograph, upon which Des could see a bare white bum.
    The car was still in once piece when he got back to it. Des quickly clambered in and took off at speed. He opened his windows to let out the heat and the estate smells that lingered.
Couldn’t have been more than a few days, Des thought, since Gary skipped and his pad had already been stripped bare. Desperate times. Desperate place. Des pulled out the photo he’d
found. It was on thick paper and there was a blurred edge to the print. The image itself was not quite sharp and a white smear at the side looked almost like a curtain. No professional piece of
porn, Des thought, but then probably not a piece of anything. He threw the photo down and