You look stunned. But also, I think, relieved. As I am. This wasn’t done maliciously. It can’t be, if there aren’t going to be any charges. It’s no longer necessary to have this ghastly hostile suspicion to the world. It isn’t the hate-mailer or Silas Hyman or Donald. Thank God.
But why is Sarah so upset?
DI Baker’s face shows no emotion. He pauses a moment, before he speaks to you.
“Your son was seen leaving the school art room moments before the automatic smoke detector went off. He was holding matches. There is no doubt in our mind that it was Adam who started the fire.”
Adam? For God’s sake, how can he say that? How?
“Is this some kind of sick joke?” you ask.
“Whoever told you that is lying,” Sarah says. “I’ve known Adam all his life and he’s the most gentle, kind child imaginable. There’s not an iota of violence in him.”
DI Baker looks irritated. “Sarah …”
“He likes reading,” Sarah continues. “He plays with his knights and he has two guinea pigs. They are the parameters of Adam’s world. He doesn’t play truant, he doesn’t graffiti, he doesn’t get into trouble. Reading, knights, two guinea pigs. Have you got that?”
Our gentle boy accused of this.
Madness.
“It was Hyman, not a child,” you say.
“Mr. Covey—”
“How the hell did he persuade you?”
“The witness is nothing to do with Mr. Hyman.”
“You’re saying that a child took white spirit into the art room?”
“I think we were too hasty to see certain occurrences as significant. The art teacher may well have been mistaken about the quantity of white spirit kept in the art room. After all, if she wasn’t following the regulations to the letter, she was hardly going to tell us that, was she? I had a brief talk with her earlier and she admitted it was possible she’d been mistaken. She’s not one hundred percent certain at all.”
I think of Miss Pearcy, sensitive, artistic Miss Pearcy, who’d be so easily intimidated by DI Baker.
“Of course she’s not one hundred percent certain,” Sarah says. “Are you one hundred percent certain when you go on holiday that you didn’t leave the oven on? Or when there’s a crash, are you one hundred percent certain you checked your mirror first before turning? It just means that this art teacher has a conscience and the courage to admit to her fallibility. Especially when a policeman tells her she might have done something wrong.”
“I understand your loyalty to your nephew but—”
She interrupts, sparks flying off her words.
“You can’t think a child had the knowledge of fires and the premeditation to open the windows at the top of the school?”
“It was a hot day,” DI Baker replies. “A teacher or child could easily have opened the windows to let in the breeze, despite it being against the rules.”
You have been stunned into silence and stillness, but now you move towards DI Baker and I think you’re going to hit him.
“Have you ever seen Adam?” you ask, then gesture to beneath DI Baker’s breast pocket. “He’d come up to about here on you. He’s eight, for fuck’s sake, just eight. His birthday was yesterday. A little boy.”
“Yes, we’re aware of his birthday.”
His words sounded menacing, but why?
“Hyman’s lied about him,” you say.
Sarah turns to you. “Silas Hyman can’t be the witness, Mike. It would look too strange if he was in the school at the time.”
“So he must have had an accomplice and—”
“I appreciate it’s hard to believe an eight-year-old child could do this,” DI Baker interrupts. “But according to fire-brigade records, children were responsible for ninety-three percent of all intentionally started school-time school fires. Just over a quarter were started by children younger than seven years old.”
But what have statistics to do with Adam?
“We think it was most likely a prank, a bit of fooling around that went wrong,” DI Baker says, as if this will appease you.
“But Adam knows lighting a fire is wrong,” Sarah says. “He’d think about the terrible consequences that may happen. For a child that age he’s extremely mature and thoughtful.”
I didn’t realize how well Sarah knows Adam. I’ve always thought she was critical of him, seeing him as spineless, not like her tall, athletic sons.
“And he knew Jenny was in the school,” Sarah continues, desperately trying to convince him. “His own sister was in there, for God’s sake.”
“Is there any animosity between the siblings?” DI Baker asks.
“What are you suggesting?” you ask and there’s violence in your voice.
“I’m sure he didn’t intend the fire to do the damage—”
“He didn’t do it.” Yours and Sarah’s voices overlap with the same certainty.
“What about the intruder?” you ask. “The one who tampered with Jenny’s oxygen. You think that was a little boy too, do you?”
“There is absolutely no evidence that there ever was an intruder,” DI Baker responds impassively. “We have talked to the medical director, and connections sometimes become faulty. It’s not significant.”
“There was an intruder! I saw him!” I shout, but no one hears me.
“Jenny must have seen Hyman at the school,” you say. “Maybe his accomplice. Something that implicated him. That’s why he came here, to—”
DI Baker interrupts you. “It really isn’t helpful to indulge in unsubstantiated theories.”
“Adam wouldn’t do it,” Sarah says again, with controlled fury. “Which means that someone else did.”
“So you believe your brother’s theory now too?” His tone is mocking her.
“I think we should look at every possibility.”
His face shows contempt.
“You told us Silas Hyman voluntarily gave a sample of his DNA?” Sarah says. “But did we actually manage to get any DNA evidence from the scene of the fire?”
“It’s really not productive to—”
“I thought not. And now we won’t be looking for it, will we?”
“Sarah—”
“If it was Hyman behind this, he’d happily volunteer his DNA if he knew that within twenty-four hours his accomplice would nail a child for it, and the forensic search would stop. He could well have banked on nothing being found for the first twenty-four hours.”
DI Baker looks at her with doughy immovability.
“The truth of the matter is that we have a reliable witness who saw Adam Covey coming out of the art room, where we know the fire was started, holding matches. Just moments later the automatic heat detector and smoke detectors went off.
“But as I said, we won’t be pursuing it any further. We are satisfied that he didn’t intend the consequences of his actions and that he’s been punished enough as it is. So we’ll just interview him and—”
“No,” you say vehemently.
They are not going to interview Adam. They can’t do that to him.
“You can’t accuse him of this,” Sarah says. “He can’t know people thought him capable of this.”
“He doesn’t need to go to the police station to be interviewed. We can do it here. So that his father can be present. You too, if you want. But I do need to interview him. You know that, Sarah.”
“What I know is that a totally innocent and vulnerable child has been set up.”
“I have asked a police constable to bring Adam and his grandmother to the hospital. They should be here in half an hour. I suggest we reconvene then.”
Baker leaves the room and I hurry after him.
“You don’t know Adam,” I say to him. “Haven’t met him. So it’s not your fault that you don’t understand why he couldn’t have done this. He’s good, you see. Not in a goody-goody way but a moral way.”
“Mum, please, he can’t hear you,” Jenny says.
“He likes readin
g Arthurian legends,” I continue. “His favorite is ‘Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.’ And that’s what he wants to be. Not a pop star or a footballer or whatever it is other boys want to be, but a knight like Sir Gawain, and he’s trying to find a modern equivalent.
“And you might think that quaint or funny, but it’s not for him; it’s a moral code that he wants to live by.”
“Even if he could hear you,” Jenny says, “I don’t think he knows about Gawain.”
She’s right, this man wouldn’t have a clue.
“He also likes history programs,” I continue. “And asks not only why people are wicked and do wicked things, but why people allow themselves to be led by such people. He thinks about these things.”
How can you make someone understand a boy like Adam?
DI Baker seems to be hurrying now, speeding his pace; I keep up.
“You probably think that all mothers say these things about their sons, but they don’t. Really. They boast about how fantastic their boy is at sports and doing outdoorsy things and being fearless—breaking an arm as he was determined to climb it! That kind of thing. Not being good and kind. Not being like Adam.
“You might think it’s me boasting now, but it isn’t. Because we don’t live in an age of chivalry, do we? We don’t live in a time when Adam’s virtues are valuable.
“And all I really want is for him to be happy. Just happy. And if it would make him happy, I’d swap his kindness for being in the football team in a blink and trade decency for popular. But he doesn’t have the choice and so I don’t either. Because that’s how he is.
“And even though it makes him unhappy and I want him to have less lonely characteristics, I am so proud of him.”
“He’s afraid of fire,” Jenny says to DI Baker, joining me. “He won’t even hold a sparkler,” she continues to his back. “He got burnt by a spark from the fire when he was a toddler, and ever since he’s been afraid.”
If she could make herself heard, she’d give DI Baker logical reasons for why Adam couldn’t have started the fire.
And she’s right. He is afraid of fire. I remember, again, him flinching from Donald’s lighter.
DI Baker reaches the exit of the hospital and I yell at him.
“Don’t do this to him! Please! Don’t do this to him!”
And for a moment he feels my presence. For a second I am a draft on his back, a tingling in his scalp, something touching his thoughts. A mother. A guardian angel. A ghost.
12
You’re at Jenny’s bedside. There’s no longer a police officer as it’s “no longer deemed necessary.”
You deem it necessary.
Sarah arrives. “Ads is on his way,” she says.
“I can’t leave Jenny on her own, now that Baker’s taken away her protection.”
“There’s lots of medical staff here, Mike. Far more than the burns unit.”
Doesn’t she think there’s a real risk?
“Tell Baker why I can’t leave Jen.”
“I think he’ll get it.”
Because in protecting Jenny you’re showing your belief that the real criminal is still out there and a threat. And the criminal isn’t an eight-year-old boy. It’s a bodily demonstration that DI Baker is wrong and Adam is innocent.
I know you want to be with him, that you feel split in two. I’ve felt it countless times in minor ways over the years. With just Jenny it had been so simple, but with two children the seamless narrative of our lives became disjointed. “For goodness’ sake,” nanny voice snaps at me. “This is hardly helping Jenny with her homework against taking Adam to Cubs, having a water-sports holiday for Jenny against a Welsh-castles one for Adam.” But I think it’s the same thing, translated onto a huge scale. And this need to be with both of them feels like a physical tearing.
“Look after him,” you say to Sarah.
As she leaves, I go after her, desperate to tell her that I saw the attacker.
Before Adam was accused, the police were on the case and I was sure they’d find the arsonist. But now the police have abandoned us and this piece of information is crucial and is turning corrosive the longer it stays, untold, inside me.
In the goldfish-bowl atrium, Sarah’s on her BlackBerry while Jenny and I wait for Addie.
The young PC who was previously guarding Jenny comes in through the main doors. Mum and Adam are just behind him.
Sarah gives Adam a kiss and gently pushes his fringe out of his eyes. I should have trimmed it on Sunday as I’d meant to, but we’d watched the History Channel together instead.
He looks thin and pale and bemused.
Sarah turns to Mum; her voice is quiet. “Has he said anything yet?” she asks.
“Nothing. I’ve tried, but he still can’t. Not a word since it happened.”
Addie didn’t speak to you on the phone last night, nor when he came to my bedside. But can he really not speak at all? Like me, you don’t know about this. You haven’t even seen him yet because, unbelievably, the fire was only yesterday afternoon.
“Does he know what this is about?” Sarah asks Mum.
“Yes. Can you stop it? Please.”
Sarah turns to the young PC. “Give me five minutes.” Speaking as his boss, not a member of Adam’s family. Jenny and I follow her.
“Why isn’t Dad here?” Jenny asks. “He should be with Addie.”
“He wants to be with you.”
“But I don’t need him.”
I think she looks scared but is determined to hide it. “Dad knows that Addie will have Aunty Sarah with him,” I say to her, surprised that I find this reassuring.
“Yes.”
We follow Sarah back into the office. DI Baker is sitting on a plastic chair that’s too small for him. Sarah stands far back as if she finds him physically repellent.
“This interview is pointless,” she says. “Adam can’t talk.”
“Or won’t,” asks DI Baker.
“He is suffering from post-traumatic stress. Sufferers can become mute and—”
“He has a diagnosis for that?” interrupts DI Baker.
“I’m sure we could get one,” Sarah responds. She must see the undisguised skepticism on DI Baker’s face. “I spent six months temporary assignment to a charity that works with torture victims. Trauma can—”
“I hardly think this is a comparable situation.”
“I’ve talked to many parents who were at the school,” Sarah says.
“You’ve no business—”
“As Adam and Jenny’s aunt, and Grace’s sister-in-law, in that capacity. God, I’ve had half the school on the phone asking how they are.
“Adam saw his mother running into the burning school, screaming for his sister. And he waited. Watching the burning building. Lots of parents tried to get him away, but he wouldn’t leave. Then he saw firefighters bringing his mum and sister out. Both of them were unconscious. He thought they were dead. I think that qualifies as trauma, don’t you? And you can’t put him through an interview. You just can’t.”
“Where’s your brother?”
“With Jenny. As she no longer has police protection.”
DI Baker looks irritated. He knows the point you’re making. “Are they here?”
Sarah’s hostile silence annoys him.
“If you are willing to cooperate in this, you can stay with him, but if—”
She cuts off his threat. “He’s outside.”
Sarah goes into the corridor.
“You need to come with us now, Ads,” she says to him. “I want you to know that apart from my idiot boss, none of us think you did this. Not for one minute.”
The PC looks astonished by her. She turns to my mother, who is shaking. “Why don’t you go and see Grace for a little while? I’ll take care of him.”
Maybe she’s afraid of Mum not holding it together.
She gives Mum a quick unexpected hug, then accompanies Adam into the office.
“Sit down, Adam,” DI Baker
said. “I need to ask you some questions, all right?”
Adam is silent.
“I asked if that was all right, Adam. If you find it hard to speak, then you can nod.”
Adam is totally still.
“I’d like to talk to you about the fire.”
The word fire makes Addie crumple into himself.
I put my arms around him, but he can’t feel my touch. And then Sarah pulls him onto her knee. Small for eight, he’s still able to sit on knees. She clasps her hands in front of her, encircling him.
“Let’s start with yesterday morning,” DI Baker says. “It was your birthday, wasn’t it?”
Maybe this is his attempt to put Adam at his ease.
“Sorry, Ads,” Sarah says. “Useless aunt. I always forget, don’t I?”
I used to think it was because she couldn’t be bothered with our children.
“I like to open my presents at breakfast,” DI Baker says to Adam. “Did you do that?”
I’d piled up his presents in the middle of the kitchen table, trying to make them look as many as possible; ours was done up with a blue satin bow, to make it look extra present-like. Inside, a “play-space enclosure” for his guinea pigs. “Looks like the bloody Hilton,” you’d said on Tuesday evening as I’d wrapped it up. “A theme park for guinea pigs,” I’d corrected.
I’d found him a card with an “I am 8!” badge so he could wear it to school, because it’s important that everyone knows it’s your birthday. It was a rocket card, even though he’s not into space, but by the time you get to eight, the age cards have almost petered out and there’s virtually no choice.
The smell of coffee and toast and pain au chocolat in the oven because it’s a birthday.
Adam came down the stairs hurriedly, two at a time. He did almost a comic-book double take when he saw the presents. “All for me? Really?”
Calling up to Jenny and you that the birthday boy was here and knowing he liked being called that and thinking that next year he probably wouldn’t.
Jenny came downstairs, far earlier than usual, and—amazingly—dressed already. She hugged Adam and gave him her present.
“Aren’t teaching assistants meant to be smartly dressed?” I said. “Professional looking?” She was wearing her short, gauzy skirt and skimpy top.
Afterwards Page 11
