Bones in the Nest

Glass crunches on the road. Pavement hammers up through ankles, knees. On to the grass. Too slippery to get a grip. Jump over a low fence. Playground. Feet whack down and it gives something back, speed, pace. Can hardly breathe. They’re not far behind. Need to get under cover. There’s someone there, by the community centre, moving my way. Don’t go down there. Double back, past the swings. Now there’s another one, crossing Darwin Road. Thick-necked fucker. Need to get to the flats, lose myself.

I’m not even tooled up, nothing, because I promised her I’d stop carrying. She’s the best thing that ever happened to me and I told her, I’m in it for the long haul, girl, I’m going to change up for you. And I meant it. I mean it. Right now the last thing I need is some white boys on my tail. She wasn’t at the library. The text said to come and pick her up. But there was nobody there. Door locked. Where did you go, princess? Saw the flicker of a reflection. Got out of there before a baseball bat whacked on my skull. Heard it crack
on the glass. Been running since. There were three of them. The big one with the bat and two others. White boys, bad skin. Maybe smackheads, maybe not. Now there’s two more. My chest’s burning. Need to stop. Door open, corner of the block. Head for it. Head down. Don’t know who they’re with or what their beef is, except my face don’t fit.

Cooler inside. Dark. Bleach on concrete hurts my throat. Grab the handrail and haul myself up the stairs. Something moves. A shape. Two shapes. Turn round and the door shuts below me.

This is it.

The marked police car slowed as it turned the corner behind the railway station. A row of terraced houses led away from the fenced-in track. From the passenger seat PC Sean Denton could see two hooded figures, silhouetted beneath a street light. It was hard to tell, but male and under twenty would be his best guess. There was a glimmer of skin as one hand reached out from a pocket into another hand; a split second as the two figures froze and one hooded face peered up at the approaching headlights of the car. Then they were gone.

‘Down there,’ PC Gavin Wentworth put his foot on the accelerator, without changing out of second gear, then slammed the brakes on at the opening of a narrow alleyway.

‘I’m on it,’ Sean said.

He jumped out and ran into the dark. Ahead of him a security light came on and the shadows flooded with colour. He clocked one red and one blue hooded top, one pair of grey tracksuit bottoms and one pair black. A car door slammed
behind him, followed by Gav’s footsteps. Sean was gaining on the suspects, but he had to make a choice. One was faster than the other, so he left the slow one for Gav. There was a risk the slower lad would make a swing for him and, for a split second, it was like running through the pages of the training manual: torch in his left hand to shield himself, while he grabbed the back of the red hoodie, twisted the fabric hard round and tucked his leg in front of the runner. The suspect fell sideways, folded under Sean’s arm and went down. Out of the corner of his eye, Sean sensed the other lad look back, see Gavin and sprint off down the alley.

‘Shit.’

He felt like he’d backed the wrong horse, but he didn’t have time to dwell on it. His prisoner squirmed face down on the ground, kicking and swearing, as Sean reached for the cuffs.

‘Oi! Calm down, son!’

He tried to grip the boy’s wrists. They were bony and thin. Sean wondered how old he was. The boy turned his head and the hood fell back to reveal sharp cheekbones and dark eyes, which narrowed as they met Sean’s. Then the boy lifted up his head and smacked it face down on the ground.

‘What the hell?’

Sean had the cuffs on him now, but again the boy cracked his forehead against the stone sets of the alleyway.

‘Oh, Jesus! Stop him doing that!’ Gav shouted.

Sean tried to get the suspect up on his feet, but the boy pulled back, twisting and slippery like a fish. His forehead met the ground again and when he lifted it this time, there was blood above one eyebrow. The security light went out
and the blood dimmed to a shiny purple in the gloom. Then Gav was there, grabbing the boy’s shoulders, spinning him round. Sean pulled him up from behind, both hands on the cuffed wrists. It was like trying to control a puppet with a life of its own, but together they managed to propel him towards the car.

‘What about the other one?’ Sean said.

‘He’s gone.’

‘You shouldn’t have done that,’ the young lad was saying. ‘You’re not allowed to batter the suspects.’

Sean felt sick.

‘Take no notice,’ Gav said. ‘He’s well known, this little shit. He tries it every time. Don’t you Saleem? Well I think you’ve pushed your luck now. Let’s see if we can have you for resisting arrest.’

At Doncaster Central Police Station, they handed Saleem Asaf over to the custody sergeant and went back to the car. It smelt of overripe apples, sweet and dying in trapped air.

‘Mucky buggers,’ Sean said. His foot found an apple core under the empty chocolate wrappers and it gave way under his heel. ‘How come the day shift never clean the cars out? I’ve got a good mind to dump this lot in someone’s boots.’

Gav belted up and put the car into reverse. Except it wasn’t reverse, it was third. The car leapt forward and juddered as it stalled, inches away from the concrete wall of the police yard.

‘Bollocks,’ Gav said. ‘Why does every car have reverse in a different place?’

‘One of life’s mysteries, Gav.’

‘You’re not wrong there.’

Sean loosened the seat belt that had tightened across his neck.

‘Count to three and start again,’ Gav muttered under his breath and reversed the car, smoothly this time, out of the tight space, avoiding the dented end of a van. He wiped something sticky off the steering wheel with his sleeve and indicated to pull onto the road.

‘Living the dream, Sean, living the fucking dream.’

Sean didn’t reply. He wanted to say it was all right. It’s what he’d signed up for, worked hard for, harder than some when it came to it. He knew he was lucky to have Gav as a partner. There were plenty of officers who took the piss, still made the same jokes they did when he was a Police Community Support Officer, but Gav was all right: a time-served constable with a reputation for being fair, but firm. Sean just wished he didn’t moan so much. It was taking the shine off.

Sean shifted his feet on the mound of thrown-away crap as Gav swung left around Market Place. They parked the car and watched and waited for the next call. This town didn’t sleep and Sean wondered where people found the money. After half an hour a job came in around the corner, two men fighting outside the Ace Bonanza Amusement Arcade. When they arrived, neither assailant wanted to press charges.

‘No worries, he’s my best mate!’ The apparent victim was wiping blood from his nose.

The two men locked together in a hug, but Sean thought they were just as likely to shift back to something uglier.

‘If you say so,’ Gav shrugged. Sean was reaching for a notebook, but Gav shook his head. ‘Let it go, son. Less paperwork.’

A pub called in a handbag theft, so they dropped in to take statements, shouting to be heard above the karaoke. Then they were back in the car, trying not to collide with a woman weaving drunkenly across the road. She turned and flicked two fingers at them, before staggering on to the opposite pavement.

By 11 p.m. they were passing the railway station again. A British Transport Police van was parked up on the forecourt. Sean thought back to the first case he’d covered as a PCSO, and the vulnerable women who’d been befriended on the station platforms and ended up on the game. He wondered what their colleagues in the Transport Police were up to tonight. He hoped for their sake it was nothing more than fare dodgers.

‘What’s the difference between South Yorkshire Police and the BTP?’ Gav said.

Sean shrugged.

‘BTP do longer shifts.’

‘That meant to be funny?’

‘That’s what they say!’ Gav laughed but Sean just shook his head.

As they drove, they looked out for Saleem’s associate and argued back and forth over what the two lads were doing, who was dealing and who was buying. The sky began to lighten. Sean opened the car window to let the clean, damp morning air drive out the stale smell. A blackbird sang a greeting from the skinny tree outside the law courts as Gav
pulled into the police yard. It was 6.25 a.m. and their shift was almost over.

‘What are you up to for the next couple of days?’ Gav said as they walked down the corridor of the police station.

‘Not a lot.’ Sean did have a plan for his days off, but he wasn’t ready to share it with Gav. ‘You?’

‘I’ve got a box set to catch up on and the usual domestic drudgery of DIY and sorting out the jungle we laughingly call a garden. Nothing special.’

Gav said goodbye and went off in the direction of the custody suite. Sean finished his paperwork and was handing in his radio, when Gav reappeared.

‘They’ve let him go.’

‘Saleem Asaf?’

‘Aye, nothing on him. Little bastard.’

‘What a waste of time,’ Sean said.

‘There’s something else,’ Gav said. ‘He’s filed an official complaint.’

‘Against me?’

‘That’s right, son. You might be getting a call from Professional Standards.’

‘Should I be worried?’

‘Not necessarily.’

Back in his nan’s kitchen, Sean sank his face into a cup of strong tea. It was eight o’clock in the morning and he needed to sleep.

‘Busy night?’ Maureen put a plate of toast in front of him.

Sean rolled his head to one side to release a crick in his neck from wrestling with the boy.

‘You could say that.’

He chewed on the hot toast and picked up the local newspaper, trying to read the sport on the back page, but his eyes couldn’t focus. He liked to read something every day, to keep up what he’d started at night classes. It’s what his teacher had told him to do: that patient, mild-mannered man, who’d never called him thick or lazy, just gave him ways to see things differently. He put the paper down. It was exhausting sometimes. He would always be dyslexic, however good he became at finding ways around it.

A second piece of toast, and a third, filled his stomach. Sleep was overcoming him. There was something he needed to say to his nan, but it would have to wait.

‘I’d better go up,’ he pushed the plate away.

Maureen reached for the paper and opened it in the centre, hunting for her horoscope. He read the headline on the front page.

‘“Chasebridge Killer … Released?” What’s that about?’ he said ‘Have I missed something?’

‘Hang on, I’m reading my stars: it’s going to be a good week for money, but I need to be careful who I rely on and someone will bring me news about a change. What? Oh.’

Maureen looked over the headline and the short column underneath. Most of the page was taken up with a picture of a dark-haired girl in a school uniform, with a choppy fringe and a sharp chin.

‘I can’t believe they’ve let her out. Flipping nutter.’

Sean leant against the door frame, wanting so badly to go up to bed, but not moving. ‘Who’s that then?’

‘It was while you were still living at your dad’s, not long
after your mam died. Here it is: Marilyn Nelson, teenage killer. She pushed a lad of sixteen off the top of the flats. Says here he’d been abused and tortured before she pushed him. Nasty.’

‘I think I remember.’ The sound of a rusty swing and a shape falling. ‘And she’s out?’

‘Says so here. Thought she could be living in Scotland or Devon. Well, that’s not very precise. Served ten years. Doesn’t seem much when his poor mother will never get him back.’

He hesitated, needing to say something to Maureen, but he couldn’t find the words.
Someone will bring news about a change.
Not yet. It could wait.

Upstairs, he closed the curtains and kicked off his shoes, undid his belt and let his trousers fall. He peeled his shirt off over his head and climbed into the single bed. He set an alarm on his phone and turned his back to the light that was seeping through the pattern of footballs and trophies on his curtains. In the back pocket of his trousers was a piece of paper, folded into a tight, hard square. It was details of a flat to rent in town.

He was on the edge of sleep when it came back to him. He was eleven years old and swinging on the only swing that wasn’t broken, listening to the grind and squeak of the rusty chain around the top bar. He saw something move on top of Eagle Mount Four, the block where the lift never worked. He thought it was a bird at first, then he thought it was a bundle that someone had dropped. And then he understood. It was the unmistakable shape of a person in a dark coat, a coat that billowed out like a pair of wings. The shape carried on falling and the wings didn’t open. He knew it must have
landed in the square, in the middle of the four blocks that made up the Eagle Mount flats. He didn’t want to see it. He stayed on the swing until the sound of metal on metal slowed down to nothing.

Long after it happened, after his own memories were messed up with other people’s versions, he could still hear the quietness that followed, as if the four towers were holding their breath.