Radio Birdman | Steve Byrne
The sound woke her - a percussive flacker that transmitted subtle vibrations through the walls. She craned to see the bedside clock. 3.13am.
Matt stirred beside her, raising his head to peer towards the window and the source of the thrumming.
“Copper chopper,” he muttered, and his head hit the pillow again.
She sighed. She had to be up in an hour for the early shift.
Outside, the police helicopter hovered closer, and the windows rattled unhappily in their frames.
“Low tonight,” she added. But Matt was already back in half sleep.
They were used to the late night intrusion. Many nights you could hear the insect drone of the helicopter over the estate – or the wail of sirens dopplering by on the street. Not a good neighbourhood.
She tried to sleep, but the drone of the chopper defeated her, circling away but always homing back just when she was on the verge of slumber. Useless. She had to be up soon anyway.
Slipping out of bed, she made the short cross to the window and peered out, scanning left and right. ‘Meerkating’, Matt had christened this action, and he laughed every time she did it. But his good-natured ridicule wouldn’t stop her. She felt uncomfortable not knowing what was going on outside her walls. Didn’t like to be blind to potential threat. The flat was on the third storey, and it gave a grand, strategic view of the neighbourhood.
The council had the gall to call this place a village, by dint of the scruffy, dogshit-encrusted green opposite the flat. The green itself was shielded from view by a stand of tall trees on the other side of the road. The helicopter passed above again, its searchlight sucking at the skeletal branches.
Always something going on. Last time the chopper had approached, she’d seen stab proof vested police hurrying to and fro across the road, calling to each other, shining torches into bushes. They’d finally homed in on a drunk, stumbling through the shadows of the trees.
As they’d stuffed the protesting vagrant into the van, he’d struggled, knocking off a policewoman’s hat. Elise had recognised the revealed profile. Kelly Jones.
Kelly had attended the same school as Elsie. She couldn’t actually call her a friend. Elise remembered Kelly as an unkempt girl, always alone and teased by the others. Rumpled clothes, a faint smell of urine.
Years later, she’d read a friend’s Facebook post, filled with reminiscences from other classmates. And one lone comment from Kelly: “So glad you enjoyed your time at school. All I remember is having stones thrown at me, and being called names. You thought you were all so cool and you made my life hell. Well, I’m a police officer now. Enjoy your life – see you on the streets…”
Out in the road, Kelly had roughly bundled the drunk into the van and slammed the door.
Elise only remembered talking to Kelly once or twice. She’d never said anything hurtful, or called the girl names. Elise wasn’t a saint – she just hoped she wasn’t one of the ones who’d caused Kelly pain. Guiltily, she knew she had not acted to prevent the abuse.
Elise pulled herself away from the memory, sighed and began to gather her clothes. May as well have coffee before she left for work.
She dressed in the living room, surveying the cheap woodchip walls. Divorce had brought her here. After selling her house, she couldn’t afford another mortgage or a private rent on her wage, so council was the only option. You took what you were offered or you went homeless - and Elleshore Urban Village was all she’d been offered. No one with a choice wanted the Village. It was a human dumping ground – filled with the anti-social evictees from other estates, drug dealers, methadone junkies and care in the community cases, all besieging the few frightened pensioners who’d lived here back when it was not such a bad place to be.
There was no community here. Neighbours and strangers were the same thing. Elise’s meerkating had identified a few characters she knew only by nickname. Mirrorman, the bearded guy who paced the green, talking to himself and waving his arms, Gobbo, the ground floor neighbour who frequently tottered home drunk in the early hours, arguing noisily with one of her boyfriends, and Colin Farrell – the good-looking teenager who rode around on a BMX bike that was too small for him. Farrell always smiled at her. He’d seemed a nice enough kid until she overheard him outside her window one day. Standing on the pedals of his BMX, keeping pace with a girl about this own age, he’d been bragging about a car he’d stolen and the resulting high-speed chase with the police. Like many of these backroad heroes, he was all toddler swagger and bullshit. Maybe the only things that built any sense of self-worth in an aimless, pointless existence.
At least she had Matt. He had his own place, and they alternated between homes. Maybe it was time to bite the bullet and move in with him permanently.
Coffee and breakfast finished, she grabbed her coat and headed for the door.
She sprang the lock and drew the single security chain. The last tenant had installed three extra bolts, top middle and bottom. She never used them. Even on this cutthroat estate, it seemed a little overkill.
Outside, on the landing, she passed her neighbours’ door. At least they were nice people. A Jamaican couple. The guy (she only knew him as ‘The Big Jamaican’ – she liked him, so giving him a derogatory nickname seemed wrong) had spoken to her on the threshold just the other morning. His accent was so thick she could only understand two out of every three words he spoke, but it was so musical she could listen to it all day.
“So you like your new home?” Her internal translator had kicked in after a delay of a few seconds, like a satellite transmission from another country. He laughed, an unusual sound, almost spoken (“Cur, cur, carrr!”).
She’d been diplomatic. He sensed it and laughed again. Cur cur carrr!
“This no housing estate. It's a wildlife reserve!” he raised a hand in goodbye, and disappeared behind his scarred, grafittied door.
There’d been another rape on the site of the demolished pub a few streets away. Two gang shootings with a two-mile radius. Every few days the local paper reported another fatal stabbing. It all seemed like a downbeat soap from her meerkat position behind the window, but leaving the relative safety of the flat – particularly at this time in the morning – made it all too real.
Outside, the trees blocking the green were smudged by a winter grey of fine mist. The helicopter rotors raised in volume as the chopper passed overhead again. Elise could hear the rasp of radios. The police were over there, on the green behind the trees.
Two choices. Cross the green, or go around. Going around would add fifteen minutes to her journey. She checked her watch. No time.
The chopper was hovering. Shafts from the searchlight beam thrust through the branches, highlighting the water droplets in the grey air.
Nervously, she walked towards the green. It was lit up like a football stadium, buzzing and crackling with radio static and urgent voices partially drowned by the attack of the chopper rotors.
She reached the thin pathway through the wall of trees that led to the field beyond.
Entering, she froze.
The helicopter clattered above. The beam of the searchlight filtered down through the grey, like the tractor beam of an alien spaceship. Silvery, illuminated water droplets glittered inside the tower of light.
There were things moving in the air. The flitter of large wings.
Her breath caught in her throat. Transfixed at the entrance to the arena, she watched the shapes disgorge from the dark metallic body of the chopper above, two of them, spiralling down through the glow.
The corpse lay on the centre of the path. The backstreet Colin Farrell. His BMX bike lay beside him, front wheel propped upward and turning slowly, sending a pinwheel shadow across the pathway.
Police lined the boundary of the communal area, looking like they wanted to be elsewhere. They were uncomfortable shapes in the mist, turning their bodies away from the scene. They hadn’t noticed her.
Another winged figure reared above the body. A creature from a nightmare, gauzy wings shimmering behind it as it hovered in the shaft of searchlight. The thing was humanoid, thin and gangly. Bristled, spindly arms conducted an invisible orchestra in the air. Bizarrely, it wore stab proof armour, and a black uniform that made it resemble some child’s action toy made man-sized and real. The sinewy body articulated, twisting its limbs back and torso forward, examining its kill.
As she watched in horror, its mosquito head darted forward, compound eyes sparkling with malice. A blade-like proboscis stabbed from the slit of a mouth, jackhammering at Farrell’s dead midriff. The blade punctured the fabric of his hoody, through to his yielding flesh. Spatters of blood hit the tarmac, spreading black like oil beneath the intense light.
Guiltily, the assembled forces of law looked away.
She could see tomorrows headline: “Elleshore stabbing victim found dead”. And no one would ever imagine the truth. They couldn’t imagine the truth – because the truth was some weird hallucination that shouldn’t exist in a rational world. But exist it did, feasting on the congealing blood of her neighbour while the police watched and wished they were somewhere else.
She couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t make sense of the scene.
Suddenly, a figure was at her side, firm pressure pushing her back out of the tree lined entranceway and into the road beyond. A flash of uniform.
“Go,” said Kelly Jones. Her eyes were wide. Damp with tears that hadn’t yet fallen.
Elise couldn’t shake her torpor.
“GO!” Kelly repeated urgently. “Before they see you!” her voice was a harshly whispered entreaty.
Elise examined the girl’s drawn features. The face she remembered from school had aged badly. Their gazes locked. Elise couldn’t voice her questions, they flickered across her lips but refused to issue from her mouth.
Then her shock broke. She turned and ran.
Across the road, over the concrete, back to the entrance to the flats, her shoes clacking beneath the competing sound of the hovering chopper.
Panicked, she fumbled for her keys, letting herself into the block, the only things in her head the echoing of her footfalls on the stairs, and the slowly receding sound of the helicopter outside. Crossing the landing, she hurried by the Big Jamaican’s door. This no housing estate. It a wildlife reserve, he’d told her. And now his words took on a new meaning. Not a wildlife reserve. A hunting reserve.
Attacking the lock with her keys, she opened the door and staggered into her flat. Inside, her weight fell against the door and slammed it shut.
Fumbling, she locked every bolt.
Matt stirred beside her, raising his head to peer towards the window and the source of the thrumming.
“Copper chopper,” he muttered, and his head hit the pillow again.
She sighed. She had to be up in an hour for the early shift.
Outside, the police helicopter hovered closer, and the windows rattled unhappily in their frames.
“Low tonight,” she added. But Matt was already back in half sleep.
They were used to the late night intrusion. Many nights you could hear the insect drone of the helicopter over the estate – or the wail of sirens dopplering by on the street. Not a good neighbourhood.
She tried to sleep, but the drone of the chopper defeated her, circling away but always homing back just when she was on the verge of slumber. Useless. She had to be up soon anyway.
Slipping out of bed, she made the short cross to the window and peered out, scanning left and right. ‘Meerkating’, Matt had christened this action, and he laughed every time she did it. But his good-natured ridicule wouldn’t stop her. She felt uncomfortable not knowing what was going on outside her walls. Didn’t like to be blind to potential threat. The flat was on the third storey, and it gave a grand, strategic view of the neighbourhood.
The council had the gall to call this place a village, by dint of the scruffy, dogshit-encrusted green opposite the flat. The green itself was shielded from view by a stand of tall trees on the other side of the road. The helicopter passed above again, its searchlight sucking at the skeletal branches.
Always something going on. Last time the chopper had approached, she’d seen stab proof vested police hurrying to and fro across the road, calling to each other, shining torches into bushes. They’d finally homed in on a drunk, stumbling through the shadows of the trees.
As they’d stuffed the protesting vagrant into the van, he’d struggled, knocking off a policewoman’s hat. Elise had recognised the revealed profile. Kelly Jones.
Kelly had attended the same school as Elsie. She couldn’t actually call her a friend. Elise remembered Kelly as an unkempt girl, always alone and teased by the others. Rumpled clothes, a faint smell of urine.
Years later, she’d read a friend’s Facebook post, filled with reminiscences from other classmates. And one lone comment from Kelly: “So glad you enjoyed your time at school. All I remember is having stones thrown at me, and being called names. You thought you were all so cool and you made my life hell. Well, I’m a police officer now. Enjoy your life – see you on the streets…”
Out in the road, Kelly had roughly bundled the drunk into the van and slammed the door.
Elise only remembered talking to Kelly once or twice. She’d never said anything hurtful, or called the girl names. Elise wasn’t a saint – she just hoped she wasn’t one of the ones who’d caused Kelly pain. Guiltily, she knew she had not acted to prevent the abuse.
Elise pulled herself away from the memory, sighed and began to gather her clothes. May as well have coffee before she left for work.
She dressed in the living room, surveying the cheap woodchip walls. Divorce had brought her here. After selling her house, she couldn’t afford another mortgage or a private rent on her wage, so council was the only option. You took what you were offered or you went homeless - and Elleshore Urban Village was all she’d been offered. No one with a choice wanted the Village. It was a human dumping ground – filled with the anti-social evictees from other estates, drug dealers, methadone junkies and care in the community cases, all besieging the few frightened pensioners who’d lived here back when it was not such a bad place to be.
There was no community here. Neighbours and strangers were the same thing. Elise’s meerkating had identified a few characters she knew only by nickname. Mirrorman, the bearded guy who paced the green, talking to himself and waving his arms, Gobbo, the ground floor neighbour who frequently tottered home drunk in the early hours, arguing noisily with one of her boyfriends, and Colin Farrell – the good-looking teenager who rode around on a BMX bike that was too small for him. Farrell always smiled at her. He’d seemed a nice enough kid until she overheard him outside her window one day. Standing on the pedals of his BMX, keeping pace with a girl about this own age, he’d been bragging about a car he’d stolen and the resulting high-speed chase with the police. Like many of these backroad heroes, he was all toddler swagger and bullshit. Maybe the only things that built any sense of self-worth in an aimless, pointless existence.
At least she had Matt. He had his own place, and they alternated between homes. Maybe it was time to bite the bullet and move in with him permanently.
Coffee and breakfast finished, she grabbed her coat and headed for the door.
She sprang the lock and drew the single security chain. The last tenant had installed three extra bolts, top middle and bottom. She never used them. Even on this cutthroat estate, it seemed a little overkill.
Outside, on the landing, she passed her neighbours’ door. At least they were nice people. A Jamaican couple. The guy (she only knew him as ‘The Big Jamaican’ – she liked him, so giving him a derogatory nickname seemed wrong) had spoken to her on the threshold just the other morning. His accent was so thick she could only understand two out of every three words he spoke, but it was so musical she could listen to it all day.
“So you like your new home?” Her internal translator had kicked in after a delay of a few seconds, like a satellite transmission from another country. He laughed, an unusual sound, almost spoken (“Cur, cur, carrr!”).
She’d been diplomatic. He sensed it and laughed again. Cur cur carrr!
“This no housing estate. It's a wildlife reserve!” he raised a hand in goodbye, and disappeared behind his scarred, grafittied door.
There’d been another rape on the site of the demolished pub a few streets away. Two gang shootings with a two-mile radius. Every few days the local paper reported another fatal stabbing. It all seemed like a downbeat soap from her meerkat position behind the window, but leaving the relative safety of the flat – particularly at this time in the morning – made it all too real.
Outside, the trees blocking the green were smudged by a winter grey of fine mist. The helicopter rotors raised in volume as the chopper passed overhead again. Elise could hear the rasp of radios. The police were over there, on the green behind the trees.
Two choices. Cross the green, or go around. Going around would add fifteen minutes to her journey. She checked her watch. No time.
The chopper was hovering. Shafts from the searchlight beam thrust through the branches, highlighting the water droplets in the grey air.
Nervously, she walked towards the green. It was lit up like a football stadium, buzzing and crackling with radio static and urgent voices partially drowned by the attack of the chopper rotors.
She reached the thin pathway through the wall of trees that led to the field beyond.
Entering, she froze.
The helicopter clattered above. The beam of the searchlight filtered down through the grey, like the tractor beam of an alien spaceship. Silvery, illuminated water droplets glittered inside the tower of light.
There were things moving in the air. The flitter of large wings.
Her breath caught in her throat. Transfixed at the entrance to the arena, she watched the shapes disgorge from the dark metallic body of the chopper above, two of them, spiralling down through the glow.
The corpse lay on the centre of the path. The backstreet Colin Farrell. His BMX bike lay beside him, front wheel propped upward and turning slowly, sending a pinwheel shadow across the pathway.
Police lined the boundary of the communal area, looking like they wanted to be elsewhere. They were uncomfortable shapes in the mist, turning their bodies away from the scene. They hadn’t noticed her.
Another winged figure reared above the body. A creature from a nightmare, gauzy wings shimmering behind it as it hovered in the shaft of searchlight. The thing was humanoid, thin and gangly. Bristled, spindly arms conducted an invisible orchestra in the air. Bizarrely, it wore stab proof armour, and a black uniform that made it resemble some child’s action toy made man-sized and real. The sinewy body articulated, twisting its limbs back and torso forward, examining its kill.
As she watched in horror, its mosquito head darted forward, compound eyes sparkling with malice. A blade-like proboscis stabbed from the slit of a mouth, jackhammering at Farrell’s dead midriff. The blade punctured the fabric of his hoody, through to his yielding flesh. Spatters of blood hit the tarmac, spreading black like oil beneath the intense light.
Guiltily, the assembled forces of law looked away.
She could see tomorrows headline: “Elleshore stabbing victim found dead”. And no one would ever imagine the truth. They couldn’t imagine the truth – because the truth was some weird hallucination that shouldn’t exist in a rational world. But exist it did, feasting on the congealing blood of her neighbour while the police watched and wished they were somewhere else.
She couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t make sense of the scene.
Suddenly, a figure was at her side, firm pressure pushing her back out of the tree lined entranceway and into the road beyond. A flash of uniform.
“Go,” said Kelly Jones. Her eyes were wide. Damp with tears that hadn’t yet fallen.
Elise couldn’t shake her torpor.
“GO!” Kelly repeated urgently. “Before they see you!” her voice was a harshly whispered entreaty.
Elise examined the girl’s drawn features. The face she remembered from school had aged badly. Their gazes locked. Elise couldn’t voice her questions, they flickered across her lips but refused to issue from her mouth.
Then her shock broke. She turned and ran.
Across the road, over the concrete, back to the entrance to the flats, her shoes clacking beneath the competing sound of the hovering chopper.
Panicked, she fumbled for her keys, letting herself into the block, the only things in her head the echoing of her footfalls on the stairs, and the slowly receding sound of the helicopter outside. Crossing the landing, she hurried by the Big Jamaican’s door. This no housing estate. It a wildlife reserve, he’d told her. And now his words took on a new meaning. Not a wildlife reserve. A hunting reserve.
Attacking the lock with her keys, she opened the door and staggered into her flat. Inside, her weight fell against the door and slammed it shut.
Fumbling, she locked every bolt.