Guilty One (7 page)

He didn’t care about last chances or new starts. He just wanted everyone to fuck off and leave him alone.

He got lines on his first day for being late.

His teacher was called Miss Pringle and she reminded him of the butterfly. She wore a pale blue jumper and had blonde hair that hung below her shoulder blades. Her tight jeans had a rose embroidered on the pocket. She was the youngest teacher he had ever had.

‘Would you like to sit at the blue table, Daniel?’ Miss Pringle said, bending over a little to talk to him with her palms pressed together between her knees.

He nodded and sat down at the table which was beside her desk. There were two other boys and two girls on the table. There was a piece of blue paper taped to the middle of the table. Daniel sat with his hands under the table, looking at a space on the floor beside Miss Pringle’s desk.

‘Girls and boys, we’re happy to welcome Daniel to the class. Would you like to say welcome to our class?’

Welcome to our class, Daniel.

He felt his shoulders hunch, feeling their eyes on him.

‘Daniel moved here from Newcastle. We all like Newcastle, don’t we?’

There was a sputter of comment and a scraping of chairs.
Daniel glanced up at his teacher. She seemed about to ask him a question, but then decided against it. He was grateful.

All through the morning, Miss Pringle kept rubbing his back then hunkering down beside him to find out if everything was all right. He wasn’t doing the work that she had asked them to do, and she thought he didn’t understand.

The lads on his table were called Gordon and Brian. Gordon said that he liked Daniel’s motorbike pencil case, which Minnie had bought for him. Daniel leaned across the table and whispered to Gordon that if he touched it, he would stab him. Daniel told him he had a knife. The girls at the table laughed and he promised to show them.

The girls were Sylvia and Beth.

‘Me mam told me you’re the new Flynn foster kid,’ said Sylvia.

Daniel slumped down into the desk, over the jotter which he had covered in pictures of guns, although Miss Pringle had asked them to write about their favourite hobby.

Beth leaned over and pulled Daniel’s jotter away from him.

‘Give it back,’ he told her.

‘How long have you lived here then?’ Beth asked, her eyes wide with glee, holding his jotter beyond his grasp.

‘Four days. Give me back my jotter or I’ll pull your hair.’

‘If you touch me, I’ll kick you in the balls. Me dad showed me how. You know Old Flynn’s an Irish witch, don’t you? Have you seen her broomstick yet?’

Daniel pulled Beth’s hair, but not so hard that she would cry out. He reached across the table and snatched back his jotter.

‘You should be careful. She makes all the kids into stew. She ate her own daughter and then she killed her husband with a
poker from the fire. Left him bleeding in the back garden, with the blood pouring all over the grass …’

‘What’s going on here?’ Miss Pringle was standing with her hands on her hips.

‘Daniel pulled my hair, miss.’

‘We don’t tell tales, Beth.’

Outside in the playground at lunchtime, Daniel ate the cheese and pickle sandwiches that Minnie had prepared, watching the lads play football. He sat on the wall to watch, sniffing in the wind, trying to catch someone’s eye. When he’d finished his lunch he tossed the bag on to the ground. The wind caught it and swept it to the gutters of the pitch, near the wire fence. He put his hands in his pockets and hunched over. It was cold, but he had nowhere else to go until it was time to go back. He liked watching them play.

‘Wanna game, man? One down, like.’

The lad who asked him was short, like Daniel, with red hair and mud splattered down his grey trousers. He wiped his nose with his sleeve as he waited for Daniel to reply.

Daniel jumped off the wall and walked towards him, hands in his pockets.

‘Wae’aye, man.’

‘Can you play, like?’

‘Aye.’

The game made him feel good. He had had a dark, heavy feeling in his stomach since the fight with Minnie over the necklace and he felt it lift for a moment as he ran the length of the muddy pitch. He wanted to score, to prove himself, but there wasn’t achance. He played hard and was out of breath when the bell rang.

The boy who had asked him to play came up at the end. He walked
beside Daniel, with the ball hooked under his arm.

‘You play all right. You can play again tomorrow, if Kev isn’t back.’

‘Aye.’

‘What’s your name?’

‘Danny.’

‘I’m Derek. Are you the new lad?’

‘Aye.’

A boy with black hair tried to punch the ball out of Derek’s hands.

‘Give over. It’s mine. This is Danny.’

‘I know,’ said the boy with the black hair. ‘You’re the new foster kid at Flynn Farm, aren’t you? We’re the next farm down. Me mam told me that Minnie the Witch had a new one, like.’

‘Why d’you call her a witch?’

‘ ’Cause she is one,’ said Derek. ‘You better watch, like. She killed her daughter and then killed her husband on the grass outside the house. Everybody knows.’

No secrets,
Daniel remembered.
Everyone knows your measure.

‘Me mam saw her husband dying and called the ambulance, but it was too late,’ said the boy with the black hair. He was grinning at Daniel and showing the gaps between his teeth.

‘Why’s she ’ave to be a witch? She might just be a murderer?’

‘Why she never get charged then? Me dad says you only ’ave to look at her to see she’s not right. You could end up like her last one.’

‘What d’you mean?’

‘She was only at Minnie’s for about a month. Nob’dy at school even knew her name. Right quiet lass. She went into this mad fit in the playground and died.’

The boy with the
black hair dropped to the ground in imitation of the fitting child. He lay with his legs open and sent his arms flailing, palsied and electrified.

Daniel watched. He felt an urge to kick him suddenly, but did not. He shrugged his shoulders and followed them back to the school.

5

Daniel felt cold
after his run. He appreciated the rare chill, knowing that the Tube would be stifling on a day like this. Fixing his tie, he viewed the room behind him in the mirror, early sun streaming through the bedroom window. He had to be at the police station by eight thirty so that questioning could begin again, but took time, as he always did, to get the knot just right. He bit down on a yawn.

Last night, with a beer after midnight, he had checked the number for City General Hospital in Carlisle. He had decided not to call, but had taken note of the number anyway. If Minnie really was sick, he knew she would have been taken there. Just the thought of her being ill and dying brought a pain to his breastbone, causing him to take a deep breath. Then it would be replaced with the burn of his anger for her, dry in his gullet – still there after all this time. He would not call her. She had been dead to him for years anyway.

Back in the interview room, Daniel inhaled the stale air of yesterday’s questions as he waited for Sebastian. Sergeant Turner’s eyes were bleary. The older man pulled gently at his collar and
straightened his cuffs. Daniel knew that the police had been given a verbal report from forensics confirming blood on Sebastian’s clothes, which had been positively identified as belonging to Ben Stokes. The CCTV film had been scrutinised by police who had yet to confirm a sighting of the boys.

Sebastian was tired when the officer brought him in. Charlotte followed, removing her shades only when she sat down, her fingertips trembling.

Sergeant Turner went through the routine of identifying himself, stating the date and the time. Daniel took the lid off his pen and waited for questioning to begin.

‘How do you feel this morning, Sebastian?’ said Sergeant Turner.

‘Fine, thanks,’ said Sebastian. ‘I had French toast for breakfast. It wasn’t as good as Olga’s though.’

‘Olga will make you some when you come home,’ said Charlotte, her voice rough, almost hoarse.

‘You remember we took your clothes, Sebastian, to send them to the lab for testing?’

‘Of course I remember.’

‘Well, we have a verbal report from the lab which says that the red marks on your shirt were actually blood.’

Sebastian pursed his lips, as if he might kiss someone. He sat back in his chair with one eyebrow raised.

‘Do you know whose blood might have been on your shirt, Sebastian?’

‘A bird’s.’

‘Why, did you hurt a bird?’

‘No, but I saw a dead one once and I picked it up. It was still warm and its blood was all sticky.’

‘Did you see the
dead bird on the day that Ben was killed?’

‘I can’t remember exactly.’

‘Well, as it turns out, the blood that was on your shirt didn’t belong to a bird. It was human blood. It was Ben Stokes’s blood.’

Sebastian surveyed the corners of the room and Daniel was sure he saw the boy smile. It wasn’t a large smile, more a small curving of his lips. Daniel could feel his heart beating.

‘Do you know how Ben’s blood might’ve got on to your shirt, Sebastian?’

‘Maybe he had cut himself, and when we were playing it kind of rubbed on to me.’

‘Well, the special doctors that looked at your shirt are able to tell a lot of things about the kind of blood that’s on your shirt. It turns out that the blood that is on your shirt is what’s called expirated blood. That’s blood that was blown out of Ben’s mouth or nose …’

Charlotte covered her face with her hands. Her long nails reached up her forehead into the roots of her hair.

‘There’s also an aerial spatter of blood on your trousers and your shoes. That’s blood that’s been dispersed as a result of force …’

Now both of Sebastian’s eyebrows were raised. He looked up into the camera. For a moment, Daniel was transfixed. It was the sight of the pretty young boy looking upwards into the eye of authority; all the unseen people watching him, upstairs, looking at his childlike expressions and trying to find cause to blame. Daniel remembered the saints that Minnie had prayed to, her soft, full fingers fervently twirling the beads of her rosary. There had been arrows to assail St Sebastian, yet he had lived. Daniel could not remember how he had died, but it had been a violent
death. Even as the police officers produced further evidence of Sebastian’s guilt, Daniel felt a stronger need to defend him. The witness had come forward to say that he had also seen Sebastian fighting with Ben much later in the day, in the adventure playground, after Sebastian’s mother said he returned home, although the sighting was not confirmed on CCTV. Daniel was not intimidated by this, or the forensics. He had undermined such evidence often enough.

Daniel could sense the police officers’ excitement as they persisted with their questions. He was waiting for them to step over the line – almost wanting them to go too far so that he could put a stop to it.

‘Can you explain how Ben’s blood might’ve got on to your clothes, Seb?’ Turner asked again, his jowls heavy. ‘The scientists tell us that this kind of blood on your clothes might suggest that you had hurt Ben and made him bleed in this way.’

‘Might suggest,’ said Sebastian.

‘Excuse me?’

‘The blood
might suggest
that I had hurt him. Suggest means you don’t know for sure …’

Daniel watched a ripple of anger cross Turner’s face. They wanted to break the boy – that was the point of the lengthy questioning – but Sebastian was proving stronger than they were.

‘You
know for sure, don’t you, Sebastian. Tell us what you did to Ben.’

‘I told you,’ Sebastian said, lower teeth protruding above his lower lip. ‘I didn’t hurt him. He hurt himself.’

‘How did he hurt himself, Sebastian?’

‘He wanted to impress me, so he jumped off the climbing frame and hurt himself. He banged his head and his nose was bleeding.
I went to see if he was all right, so I suppose that would have been when his blood got on to me.’

Despite the temper, this new information seemed to please Sebastian. He sat up straighter and nodded a little, as if to confirm its authenticity.

At seven o’clock on Wednesday, they brought dinner to Sebastian and his mother, which they ate in the cells. It depressed Daniel to watch them. Charlotte ate little. Daniel followed her when she stepped outside for a cigarette. It was raining again. He turned up the collar on his jacket and put his hands in his pockets. The smell of her cigarette smoke turned his stomach.

‘They just said they’re going to charge him,’ said Daniel.

‘He’s innocent, you know.’ Her large eyes were imploring.

‘But they’re going to charge him.’

Charlotte turned from him slightly and he could see her shoulders shaking. Only when she sniffed did he realise that she was crying.

‘C’mon,’ said Daniel, feeling almost protective of her, ‘shall we tell him together? He needs you to be strong right now.’ Daniel was not sure why he said that – he kept a distance from his clients – but part of him kept on remembering being a young boy in trouble with a mother who was unable to protect him.

Charlotte was still shaking but Daniel watched her straighten her shoulders and take a deep breath. Her ribcage became visible through the V of her sweater. She turned and smiled at him, the skin around her eyes still wet with tears.

‘How old are you?’ she said, her long nails on Daniel’s forearm suddenly.

‘Thirty-five.’

‘You look
younger. I’m not trying to flatter you, but I thought you were in your twenties still. You look good; I wondered if you were old enough for this … to know your stuff, I mean.’

Daniel laughed and shrugged his shoulders. He looked at his feet. When he looked up he saw that her cigarette was getting damp. Warm raindrops clung to the stoic lacquered curls of her hair.

‘I like a man who looks after himself.’ She wrinkled her nose at the rain. ‘So they charge him and then what?’ She sucked hard on her cigarette and her cheeks hollowed. Her words were harsh but Daniel could still see her trembling. He wondered about the husband in Hong Kong, and how he could leave her to deal with this on her own.