Split Second (21 page)

‘I’ve seen the papers,’ he said. No commiserations or anything.

Guilt leapt inside her.
DEATH IN VAIN.
She stiffened. ‘Right.’

‘It can’t all be . . . well, it’s not all true, is it? What they said.’

The fact that he had to ask the question saddened her. How little trust he had, in her, in Luke. She had shared something of Luke with him – had he not heard her? Did he now not believe her? He’d come looking for her at the hospital, came there twice, and then they’d met in the pub, and each time she couldn’t quite figure him out. It was like he thought they had some common cause, but it didn’t really feel that way to her. He must hate her, surely. His son was dead, hers still alive. His only child gone, while she had a second child to comfort her.
DEATH IN VAIN.
There they were, the perfect middle-class family, Jason the golden hero, whilst Luke, Luke was now the undeserving cause of Jason’s death and Louise the inadequate, feckless single parent.

‘Louise?’

Wordless, confused, she was unable to deal with him on top of everything else. She hung up.

Andrew was cooking, making spicy chicken and basmati rice, rinsing the rice under cold running water prior to boiling it when Val got back.

She came straight through, her arms full of newspapers. ‘Have you actually read them?’ Her eyes blazing, her face flushed. She slapped them down one after the other.

‘Yes,’ he said. He’d passed the hospital shop on the way to his department and they were there, startling, making his heart stop. The ground shifted underfoot. He’d even bought them himself. Scoured them feeling like a voyeur, his pulse too quick and heat in his face. His first reaction was a dreadful sense that there was some truth in the damning reports and that Jason’s honest response had been a terrible mistake. That prospect plunged him into an icy lake of despair, of senseless, meaningless loss. It couldn’t be true. It mustn’t be true. Then he had torn at them, cursing, shredded them and stuffed them in his bin, ink smeared on his hands. Val had rung him at work and he’d cut her short, ‘Yes, it’s outrageous. Completely. But look, I’ve a patient due, we’ll talk later.’

And in the middle of the afternoon, unable to quell the unease, he had rung Louise, anxious to settle the questions he had, hoping to reassure himself that Luke wasn’t the villain he’d been painted. She’d been too upset to talk.

Now he said, ‘You can’t trust what they—’

‘This is what Jason died for?’ Val shouted. ‘A thug, a yob who should have been locked up already.’

‘Val, you don’t know—’

‘He’d been in trouble with the police. He was too disruptive to stay in school, he was setting fire to things, terrifying people.’

‘It’s exaggerated, the tabloids, for Chrissakes, you know how it works.’ Why couldn’t he just agree with her? He’d shared the same sense of dismay, harboured the same doubts.

‘You’re defending him!’

He shook his head.

‘I wish he’d died,’ she said. ‘I wish Jason had done nothing and that Luke Murray had died instead.’

Silence split the air. She stared at him, jaw up, defiant.

‘Oh, Val.’

‘It’s true.’ Her mouth trembled. She shook her head quickly.

‘I know.’ He thought of Luke lying silent in his hospital bed. Of Louise, in the pub, talking about her son. ‘It’s easy to hate him. To blame him. Reading all that crap. To wish Jason had been a million miles away. It’s so easy. A scapegoat. But it’s wrong, Val. Half of it’ll be exaggerated, sensationalized. That’s not the answer.’

‘Why not?’ she demanded. ‘This is our child we’re talking about, not some abstract, hypothetical case. This is ours, ours!’ She hit the table. ‘He died for nothing.’

‘No.’ He wouldn’t have it.

‘So you think this scum deserved saving?’

‘Val, please calm down.’

‘No, I won’t calm down. I’m so angry. I have every right to be angry. You should be angry,’ she yelled.

‘I am!’ he said. ‘What is this? A competition? Who’s angriest, most heartbroken? Who’s most traumatized? Who misses him most?’

She flinched.

‘I am angry, but I’m angry with the ones that hit him. Luke Murray wasn’t holding the knife. And I will not accept that what Jason did was worthless. I’m proud of him.’

‘Proud!’ She groaned, tugged at her hair. ‘He was stupid.’

‘No! He had the guts, he had the humanity to help someone in trouble.’ Andrew’s voice trembled; he tried not to shout. ‘He didn’t stop and judge them first: ask if they’d got a drug habit or messed up at school. He just went to help. I love him for that.’ He swallowed. ‘I love him so much for that. He didn’t look away or sit silent like the rest of them. Imagine if everyone did what Jason did, what a world we’d have.’

Tears stood in her eyes. ‘You are so wrong,’ she said. ‘And he was wrong,’ she went on. ‘He misjudged—’

‘Don’t!’ He tried to silence her. She was tearing it down. Making his death meaningless, pointless, pathetic. ‘You were the one said he was brave, remember? Would you rather he had been a coward?’

‘He’d still be here,’ she said.

He felt the space between them, a chasm, steep-sided, too wide to bridge. Jagged rocks like knives far below.

‘But he wouldn’t be our Jason,’ he said.

She gathered together the newspapers; she was still wearing her coat. ‘I’m going to Sheena’s.’

‘I’ve made some food.’

‘I’m not hungry.’

She couldn’t go like this. Leaving everything so tangled. ‘Val, can we talk?’

‘There’s nothing to say.’ Resignation blunt in her voice.

‘Please?’ He wanted to tell her he loved her, but the words wouldn’t come. He watched her walk away and heard the front door close quietly behind her.

He moved to turn the gas ring off and caught a glimpse of Jason out in the garden, sitting on the bench, bent over his guitar, then glancing up, hair falling away from his face and smiling at Andrew.

W
hen Louise got back from work, she made some pasta and tuna for their tea, then booted up the laptop. The pieces were there on the internet, and after them threads of messages readers had posted. Outraged and virulent, most of them. Luke was Borstal material; he’d obviously grown up without moral guidance or discipline, etc., etc. These people believed what they’d read, swallowed it hook, line and sinker. About Luke, about her. The impotence, the inability to shout the truth from the rooftops was tempered by the miserable shame Louise felt, the sense of failure.

Ruby said school had been weird but okay. Some of the kids thought it was cool that Luke had been in the papers again and didn’t really care what it said about him.

‘The cult of celebrity,’ Louise muttered.

Intent on maintaining a brave face, after tea she persuaded Ruby to run through her pieces and watched her.

‘Excellent!’ she said.

‘The wig moved a bit.’

‘I never noticed,’ she said.

Their visit to Luke was brief that evening. Louise read some of the papers out to him. Some deluded part of her hoping that he’d be so annoyed at what had been said that he’d wake up fighting. He never moved. Not a flicker.

* * *

Louise went round to see Angie later that evening. The last snowfal had all but gone now, rain most of the day, so just a drift left along the fence where it was shaded and sheltered, though more was forecast. Gusts of wind rattled the branches in the sycamore and made the lights swing. She’d keep them on, she decided, a bit of Luke shining in the dark. A beacon. She could hear the clatter of a gate somewhere close by, and a dog whining and yapping.

She was disconcerted when Sian opened the door in tears.

‘What’s wrong?’ Was Angie bad? Had she collapsed again? Louise went to put her arm round Sian, but the girl moved away into the living room and Louise went after her.

‘The stuff in the papers,’ Sian said. Angie looked miserable too.

‘Oh love, ignore it,’ Louise told the girl. ‘It’s a pack of lies. They’d write anything to sell a few more copies. We know it’s not true.’ Sounding stronger than she felt. ‘You know Luke. He’s no angel, but he’s not a devil either. He’s not got a mean bone in his body.’

They were both looking peculiar. Uncertainty stole through her. ‘What is it?’

Angie bit her lip, put her hand to her head.

‘I didn’t say any of that,’ Sian said in a rush. ‘Not what they put. They changed it, they made it sound really bad.’

‘Sian?’ Louise said, perplexed.

‘I’m so sorry, Louise.’ The girl started crying. ‘I didn’t . . .’

Louise felt everything collide: the girl weeping, the headlines, Andrew Barnes on the phone. ‘You talked to the papers?’ she said, quaking. A bad taste in her throat.

‘They kept ringing. They just wanted to get an idea of what Luke was like. Human interest for people. I never said those things, Louise. I never.’

Louise covered her eyes and pressed her lips tight together, felt the rapid thud in her chest and the busy swarm humming in her head. It was all such an awful mess.

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Oh God.’ Louise sat down heavily on the sofa.

‘I’m so sorry,’ Sian sobbed.

‘It’s okay,’ Louise said, still smarting with shock and aggravation but knowing that the girl needed her forgiveness. ‘It’ll be okay.’ The words shallow in the overheated room.

He stood watching the house; the night was cold and foggy, the pavements and fences shone with a dull gleam under the street lights. The thick air tasted of tar and seemed to cling to his clothes, making them damp.

The house was a bog-standard three-bedroom semi. One of thousands built by the local authority in the post-war period. Council houses. Many of them sold since in right-to-buy schemes, but this one didn’t bear any of the marks of owner occupation. No big extension, fake stone cladding or laughable mullioned windows, no garage crammed into the space at the side of the house. Just red-brick, a door in the middle, a window either side of it and two on the storey above them. And a satellite dish. In front of the house, a concrete driveway, an old Vauxhall parked there. There was a yellow glow of light through the glass in the door and electric blue from one of the upstairs rooms. Someone watching telly? Him?

Two weeks since Louise had given him the name, and still nothing had happened. Bland reports from Martine claiming they were making progress but never any specifics. And after two weeks he was still free. Going about his business. Laughing in their faces.

Thomas Garrington.

Andrew hadn’t been able to find him on the hospital system. He had to guess at dates of birth around Halloween. Louise had told him Garrington was celebrating his birthday when he and Luke clashed at the party. He had to guess which year, try days either side. He must have entered thirty different combinations, and nothing. Perhaps Garrington had never been to Wythenshawe Hospital. Perhaps he’d been born at MRI, or the family had moved to Manchester in recent times and managed to get rehoused.

While he had been hunched over Harriet’s terminal, stabbing at keys and crossing off combinations, he hadn’t thought about what he might do with any information he found. The acquisition of it was all that mattered. Knowledge is power.

In the same way, he was unaware what he might do if Thomas Garrington appeared now. But the very prospect of it made him clench his fists, sent his breathing up a gear. Seared in his memory was the glimpse he’d had: Garrington and the girl by the front gate, yelling as Jason and the other boy struggled over Luke. The look on Garrington’s face: exhilaration. Wild and high and excited.

Andrew heard footsteps in the fog and stepped back into the alleyway. The steps grew closer, were drowned out by the noise of a passing car, then he saw a man and his dog across the other side of the road. When they had gone, swallowed up by the fog again, he resumed his vigil.

The anger came in waves. He didn’t resist but let it carry him out to the depths. Allowed the pictures to bloom in his head: saw himself knocking the boy down and beating him senseless with a baseball bat, spurred on by the meaty sound of wood on flesh and bone; driving into him with the car and reversing back over his body, the satisfying jolt as the wheels went over him; felt the heft of a butcher’s knife in his hand and the ease with which it slid into the boy’s chest and throat and belly, watching his expression alter from belligerent to wary to fearful then anguished. Peeling back the layers of pretence. You hurt too. You bleed.

Or fire! Push a Molotov cocktail through the letter box and watch the colours at the windows change. Him trapped behind the glass, fists banging on the double glazing, face contorted.

The images were lurid, heightened and of no comfort whatsoever. They simply fed the anger, tinder to the flames.

There had been other times in his life when there had been a hint of this rage, like when his boss mounted her bullying campaign: micromanaging him, belittling his work and his demeanour, alternately carping and mock-concerned. Until the sight of her, the scent of her perfume, made him seethe. But never anything as raw, as profound as this. He wanted to howl at the moon, bay for blood.

The door opposite opened and the whole of Andrew’s skin prickled. Framed in the light, one hand on the door jamb, the other scratching at his belly, was the boy. Looking down towards his feet where something moved. A cat. Andrew saw the lad nudge the animal gently with his foot. His bare foot. The cat leapt over the threshold and was lost in the dark. The boy closed the door.

He was still there, living, breathing, scratching. Letting the fucking cat out.

Andrew’s phone rang, loud in the muffled night. He dug it from his pocket. It was Louise.

‘I don’t want you to contact me again,’ she said.

He was surprised. ‘Why? What’s wrong?’

She gave a little laugh, no humour in it. ‘You really don’t know?’ She sighed. ‘Luke’s alive, Jason isn’t. It’s not fair, is it? Every time you see me or Luke, you must wish it had been different. It’s only natural.’ She spoke brusquely, sounded brittle.

He wasn’t sure what to say.

‘And now with the garbage in the papers – I’m sorry about what happened to Jason, but he saved Luke and I can never be sorry for that. I just think it’s better if we—’