Breakers

by Doug Johnstone

  He pictured her first thing this morning, slipping out of bed to the toilet, the sound of her brushing her teeth. She sneaked back in and saw he was awake, kissed him quickly on the lips then headed back to Inveresk before she was caught. Bean was disappointed Flick wasn’t there when she woke up, asking when she’d get to meet her again.

  When they got to Greendykes House Tyler held the door open, ushered his mum into the lift, then up and inside the flat. She put the telly on and crashed out on the sofa. This was the same room where he found her yesterday and it was depressing to be back here with her. The place stank of booze, shit and piss. He wondered how long before Angela got antsy and went out to score. Or if she would stave it off with booze. He tried to think if there was any alcohol in the flat, but what was the point? She would find stuff if she wanted to. She never had money but she always had money for smack and drink, that’s how it worked.

  He made her a cup of tea and placed it on the arm of the sofa by her head.

  ‘Thanks, love,’ she said, without looking at him. She was watching an episode of Wanted Down Under, wholesome British families out property hunting in Australia, contemplating emigrating to a better life.

  He saw the shit stain on the carpet from where he’d found Angela lying yesterday. He went to the sink and soaked a sponge, then came back and got on his knees, started scrubbing at it.

  Eventually Angela noticed. She looked confused then put it together. ‘Leave that, I’ll get it.’ Her voice was so pathetic.

  Tyler kept scrubbing. ‘It’s fine.’

  ‘No, it’s not.’ But she didn’t move to stop him, just lowered her head in shame and turned back to the television.

  He finished up and was heading out the door when she spoke.

  ‘Tyler?’

  He stopped in the doorway and turned back.

  She looked at him with deep sadness in her eyes, her body swamped in those clothes. ‘I’m sorry.’

  He didn’t know if she was apologising for what she’d done, or what she was going to do. It didn’t matter either way.

  He chewed the inside of his cheek and left the flat.

  He went in the school gates and saw a police car waiting outside the main entrance. He was twenty yards away when the front passenger door opened and Pearce got out, arching her back and stretching her shoulders.

  He shook his head as he reached her. ‘Please leave me alone.’

  Pearce looked at him with sympathy. ‘It’s your sister.’

  His stomach dropped. ‘Bean? What’s happened?’

  Pearce shook her head. ‘Kelly. I’m sorry, Tyler, she’s dead.’

  The blood rushed to his face and his legs felt like jelly. He was relieved about Bean more than anything else, and ashamed of that. Pearce had told him that way deliberately, to fuck with him. He blinked and tried to breathe normally.

  ‘Are you sure?’ he said.

  ‘Barry has already identified her.’

  ‘How did it happen?’

  Pearce pointed at the police car. ‘That’s what we’re trying to find out. You need to come down to the station and have a chat.’

  Tyler looked past her at the school. From here, maybe a dozen classrooms were looking out on him talking to a cop. So that was over three hundred kids and teachers, all eyeballing this conversation.

  He opened the car door and got in.

  34

  Craigmillar Police Station was an anonymous low-slung concrete sprawl, one storey high, clean brick and bright-blue trim around the doors and windows. It hunkered between a community centre for adults with learning difficulties and a sliver of ground where a handful of the travelling community permanently camped out. The only clues to the station’s status were the high metal fences on either side and the two squad cars parked out front.

  Tyler was led into a room at the side of reception. It was bland, metal desks in the middle, uncomfortable chairs, a projector and AV equipment for presentations. It smelled of bleach and there was a scatter of biscuit crumbs on the carpet. This was a meeting room not an official interview room, and Tyler wondered about that.

  ‘Where’s Barry?’

  Pearce signalled for him to sit down. ‘He’s being interviewed.’

  ‘He’s surely not a suspect.’

  ‘You don’t think?’

  ‘He wouldn’t kill his own sister.’

  Pearce raised her eyebrows. ‘Are you implying he would kill someone who wasn’t his sister?’

  ‘That’s not what I said.’

  Tyler thought about Bean, the back of Barry’s hand cutting her cheek open. He wondered if Miss Kelvin had mentioned it in class this morning, if Bean had told her anything. Something else occurred to him.

  ‘Have you told Mum yet?’

  Pearce shook her head. ‘We tried the flat this morning at the same time as we got Barry. There was no answer.’

  Tyler nodded. ‘I was bringing her back from hospital.’

  That got Pearce’s attention. ‘Is she not well?’

  ‘OD’d again.’

  ‘So where is she now?’

  ‘On the sofa, drinking tea. Or maybe she’s already out trying to score.’

  Pearce bit at the corner of her lip. ‘We’ll send a uniformed officer out to speak to her.’

  Tyler looked around the room. Outside the window two officers in stab-proof vests were climbing into a car with polystyrene cups of coffee in hand. They were laughing at a joke, unhurried, at ease with their authority.

  ‘You said Barry was being interviewed,’ Tyler said.

  ‘That’s right, with his lawyer.’

  ‘Barry doesn’t have a lawyer.’

  ‘It appears there are some things you don’t know about your big brother.’

  ‘Half-brother.’ Tyler frowned. ‘Anyway, why are you not interviewing me?’

  ‘Do you want us to?’

  Tyler shook his head. He scratched at a piece of graffiti on the corner of the desk that said ‘Debbie is a slag’. The letters had been gone over so many times they had etched the words into the metal tabletop. Outside, two seagulls were scrapping over a discarded burger.

  Pearce leaned forward, opened her hands out. ‘Look, I think we got off on the wrong foot.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘I really want to help you, Tyler. And Angela. And especially Bethany.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘Kelly is dead, doesn’t that mean something to you?’

  Tyler didn’t speak.

  ‘Apart from the fact your half-sister has been murdered, it also suggests that you and your family are in danger.’

  ‘How so?’

  Pearce sighed. ‘You know how, I know you do.’

  Tyler waved his hands, indicating for her to keep talking.

  She looked at him. ‘You and I both know who did this.’

  ‘Do we?’

  Pearce actually looked around, as if making sure no one was eavesdropping. Tyler wondered about bugging devices, was that legal? Inadmissible evidence anyway, he knew that much.

  ‘This is revenge,’ Pearce said. ‘From the Holts. They’ve somehow found out that you and your siblings robbed their house and stabbed Monica, and this has escalated.’

  ‘If you think it was the Holts, you should be talking to them.’

  ‘We will be, don’t worry.’

  ‘But in the meantime, you’re hassling me and my brother in the middle of our grief.’

  Pearce got up and wandered round to the window, looked out for a moment. It was calculated, like she was thinking of something on the hoof, but it was obvious she had this all planned out.

  ‘I’m giving you one last chance,’ she said. ‘That’s what you’re doing here. I’m giving you the chance to come out of this alive and in one piece.’

  Tyler shook his head. ‘No, you’re not. You’re trying to get me to grass on Barry.’

  ‘It’s not grassing if it saves Bethany’s life.’

  Tyler pushed his seat back from the table and the
scrape of it made Pearce jump. ‘You don’t give a shit about Bean, so stop pretending you do.’

  Pearce studied him for a few moments.

  ‘I know what it’s like,’ she said eventually.

  Tyler just stared. ‘No, you don’t.’

  She swallowed, took a breath, seemed uncomfortable for the first time since he’d met her. She looked out of the window again and Tyler had the impression this was different from last time, this wasn’t premeditated.

  ‘I knew your mum at school, did you know that?’

  Tyler scratched at the table. ‘Everyone knows everyone around here.’

  ‘We weren’t mates or anything, but we were in a couple of the same classes. She dropped out when she got pregnant with Barry. Aged fifteen, I think.’

  ‘That’s a nice story.’

  ‘By that same age, I had been regularly raped and sexually assaulted for three years by my stepdad. Every week since I was twelve, since I had my first period. I tried to tell my mum but I couldn’t get the words out, and I knew she wouldn’t believe me anyway, she would take his side. Eventually I ran away. Only then did the police get involved. They found me begging, living on the street, sleeping by the warm air vents at the Commie Pool. When they tried to take me home I freaked out, told them everything. They didn’t believe me. My stepdad denied it, Mum said it was all nonsense, that I was just a difficult teenager making things up.’

  She turned and held his gaze. ‘So I know what it’s like to have nowhere to turn to, Tyler. I really do.’

  Pearce’s eyes were wet and Tyler looked down at the floor.

  ‘What did you do?’ he said.

  She walked back over to the table and pulled up her sleeves. Faded scars criss-crossed the inside of her wrists, healed over the years but still there as a reminder.

  ‘I was lucky,’ she said. ‘Mum found me and I went to hospital. If my stepdad had found me I’m sure he would’ve left me to die. I refused to go home when the hospital released me, said I would do it again. They threatened to section me. So I ran away again. Lived rough until I turned sixteen, stayed on the floor of a friend’s house on and off, when her parents let me. Then I got smart. Spoke to a social worker, applied for a council flat, got into the system.’

  She pulled her sleeves back down but stayed looming over him at the table.

  ‘I know it could easily have worked out differently. I could’ve died. I was only a whisper away from that. So I know about the situation you’re in.’

  Tyler shook his head. ‘There’s no situation.’

  Pearce became angry, barely containing it. ‘I can’t help you if you don’t talk, Tyler. I’m trying to save your fucking life, and your little sister’s. Do you want to know what they did to Kelly? There were signs of torture, multiple stab wounds, strangulation, severe beatings about the face and body, then she was set on fire, most likely while still alive.’

  Tyler tried to swallow but his mouth was dry. ‘So go and arrest the guys who did it.’

  ‘We will,’ Pearce said. ‘But you know how it works. They’re smart, they’ll have alibis. They’ll have been careful about forensics, they know about that stuff. There’s a reason we haven’t caught them before. I need you to give me Barry first, that’s my way into this.’

  Tyler stood up. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. And even if I did, you can’t protect us.’

  ‘We’re the only ones who can,’ Pearce said. ‘Do you think Barry will protect you from Deke Holt? Do you think Barry wouldn’t sell you in a second if it saved his skin? He’s probably in the interview room right now with his solicitor working out how he can drop you in it, now that Kelly’s out of the picture.’

  Tyler shuffled from foot to foot.

  ‘Who knows?’ Pearce said. ‘Maybe he killed Kelly because she was a witness. Maybe you’re next.’

  ‘That’s crazy,’ Tyler said. ‘You said she was tortured.’

  ‘You think Barry couldn’t do that?’

  He thought about those fucking dogs, and about Barry assaulting him and Bean. And his million other acts of violence against the world.

  Pearce narrowed her eyes. ‘He was sleeping with her, wasn’t he?’

  Tyler sat down.

  Pearce sighed. ‘Fucking his own sister. Christ, it’s like the Wild West around here.’

  Tyler rubbed at his forehead, felt a tightness across his brow.

  ‘If you don’t speak,’ Pearce said, ‘I have to let you go.’

  ‘Great.’

  She pointed out of the window. The seagulls had settled their argument over the burger, the bigger one had it. The bigger one always wins in the end.

  ‘You think it’s safer for you out there than in here?’

  Tyler looked around the room, at the nothingness of it. ‘I’ll take my chances.’

  Pearce paced up and down, like a detective in an old movie pretending to think something over. Or maybe she really was thinking things over.

  ‘Where did you and Bethany stay last night?’

  Tyler straightened in his seat. ‘What?’

  ‘It was early when we came round to your flat. You and Bethany didn’t stay there last night, did you?’

  Tyler looked at the table.

  ‘My guess is that you didn’t think it was safe.’ Pearce moved closer to him, stood next to the table. ‘Given what happened to Kelly, that was probably sensible.’

  Tyler shook his head, to himself more than anything. ‘We stayed at a friend’s house.’

  ‘You found someone willing to take that chance?’

  ‘What chance?’

  Pearce leant her knuckles on the table. ‘Tyler, for a smart kid, you can be pretty stupid sometimes. If you’re in danger, anyone sheltering you is in danger too. So this friend of yours better make sure the Holts don’t hear about him giving you somewhere to hide out.’

  ‘It’s not like that.’

  ‘No?’

  Tyler rubbed at his palm with his other hand. ‘It’s just different. It’s a different world.’

  Pearce shook her head. ‘Like you said earlier, everyone around here knows each other’s business. That’s the problem with this place, no one can keep a secret. That’s why you and Barry are in the shit.’

  ‘We’re not in the shit.’

  Pearce held her hands up. ‘If that’s how you want to play it, fine. I tried to help you, remember that. I tried to give you a way out.’

  ‘By grassing up Barry.’

  ‘By helping me get a psychotic maniac off the street and end this ridiculous vendetta.’

  ‘You won’t get Barry off the street, that’s the problem,’ Tyler said. His hand came up and touched his bruised eye. ‘You’ll fuck it up, then I’ll be dead.’

  Pearce gave him a serious look. ‘I promise that won’t happen.’

  Tyler chewed at his thumbnail before he spoke. ‘You can’t promise that.’

  Pearce sighed and straightened up, went back to the window for some more acting like a detective. ‘Well, maybe we won’t need you anyway.’ She turned back. ‘Did you know Monica Holt is conscious? Apparently her memory of that night is coming back. I’m heading to the hospital next to speak to her. I’m sure she’ll have some interesting things to say.’

  ‘I’m glad she’s OK.’

  Pearce raised her eyebrows. ‘I’ll bet you are. But when she tells me what happened, that’s it. You and Barry will both go down.’

  ‘It wasn’t us, I keep telling you.’

  Pearce looked insulted. ‘Spare me, it’s far too late for that shit. When you get put away, that’ll leave Bethany being looked after by Angela, is that what you want?’

  ‘Angela is her mum.’

  ‘Angela’s in no fit state to look after anyone, including herself. Without you around Bethany will be taken into care, you know that.’

  Pearce stared at him for a long time. Tyler wondered what Barry was up to in the interview room. He couldn’t be cutting a deal, surely. No, he would be sitting
in silence. They didn’t have anything, he just had to ride it out. But what about Monica?

  Tyler thought about Kelly. She was a victim of Barry as much as anyone else. He tried to conjure up happy memories of the two of them as kids, but the truth was that Kelly had been under Barry’s spell from way back. There were glimmers of a caring sister now and then, but mostly subsumed by the role she played with Barry, the pressure he put her under. Tyler remembered a few moments with her, but always when Barry wasn’t around. Kicking a ragged old football around across the road before it was a building site, sharing a bag of stolen Haribo on the way home from school. One time, Kelly had tried to help him with his spelling homework, but despite being several years older her spelling was terrible and her handwriting even worse, and Tyler had to explain to his teacher why he’d done so badly.

  But most of the time, when Barry was around, Tyler was treated as the runt of the litter, ignored or abused by the pair of them. Until Bean came along and replaced him in that role. He couldn’t let her go through the stuff he went through, so he’d spent the last few years taking care of her. He wasn’t about to stop now, just when she needed him most.

  Pearce eventually turned away.

  ‘Just go,’ she said.

  Tyler stood up. He reached the door, his fingers on the handle.

  Pearce turned back to look at him. ‘Good luck, Tyler, I mean it.’

  35

  Tyler answered his phone after a deep breath.

  ‘Where the fuck are you?’ Barry said.

  Tyler looked around at the big Victorian houses of Cluny Avenue. He’d come here straight from the police station, jumped on a bus then just wandered around the streets, soaking up the affluence. He needed to pretend for a few minutes that he wasn’t in the middle of all this. He imagined a parallel universe where one of these houses was his home, maybe he was attending Inveresk, maybe he was even friends with that prick Will, playing rugby on a Saturday morning, attending chapel on a Sunday, singing hymns and hanging around afterwards to claim sanctuary from all the murderous bastards out to get him and his family.