The Ultimate Truth

by Kevin Brooks

I just looked at him, a tough-looking fifteen-year-old Slade kid, and wondered what the hell he wanted with me.

  ‘Mason Yusuf,’ he said, holding out his hand. ‘You helped my sister.’

  ‘Oh, right,’ I said, shaking his hand. ‘How is she?’

  Mason grinned. ‘She can’t stop talking about you. You’re her hero.’

  I shrugged, embarrassed. ‘I didn’t really do anything.’

  ‘Yeah, you did. You stood up to six Beacon Boys and took a beating for her.’

  ‘I got a couple of them.’

  ‘So I heard.’ He glanced to one side, then looked back at me. ‘Anyway, I just wanted to let you know they’ve been taken care of.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The kids who beat you up, the ones who were messing with Jaydie. They’ve been dealt with. They won’t bother you again.’

  ‘Right . . .’ I said, not quite sure what he meant.

  He took a scrap of paper from his pocket and passed it to me. ‘That’s my address and mobile number. Any problems, anything you want, anything at all, just get in touch, OK?’

  ‘Thanks,’ I mumbled.

  ‘You looked out for Jaydie,’ he said simply. ‘Now I’m looking out for you.’

  ‘You don’t have to do that. I mean, there’s no need—’

  ‘I’ve got to go,’ he said, ignoring my protest and walking off. ‘Next time you’re passing the Slade, call in and see us.’ He grinned over his shoulder at me. ‘You’ll make Jaydie’s day.’

  Since then, Mason has been true to his word. He’s looked out for me, kept his eye on me, helped me out whenever I needed it. And although we come from completely different backgrounds, and our lives are worlds apart, we’ve become really good friends. I’ve got to know Jaydie pretty well too. She’s twelve now, and she’s still got a bit of a crush on me, which can sometimes make things a bit awkward between us. But we manage to get round it most of the time. We’re friends. We work it out. That’s what friends do.

  I could see Jaydie getting out of the back of the Nissan now. She smiled at me and followed Mason and the other guy over to where I was standing. I’d got off my bike now and was trying to disentangle the front wheel from the tree roots.

  The guy with Mason was Big Lenny. I don’t know if Lenny’s his real name or not, but that’s what everyone calls him. He’s Mason’s minder. He goes almost everywhere with him. Some people make the mistake of thinking Lenny’s a bit dim-witted. Partly because he’s freakishly big, partly because he very rarely says anything, and partly because he always wears slightly odd clothes. Today, for example, he was wearing cheap denim jeans with six-inch turn-ups, a V-neck jumper with no shirt, and a second-hand suit jacket that was at least two sizes too small for him. Which, admittedly, did make him look a bit odd. And maybe Lenny is a bit odd. But there’s nothing wrong with that. And as for being dim-witted . . . well, he might not say very much, and he might not be the world’s greatest thinker, but he always seems perfectly content with his life, and in my book that’s a pretty smart way to be.

  ‘Hey, Lenny,’ I said, looking up at him. ‘Good to see you.’

  He didn’t reply, just nodded his enormous head.

  Jaydie came up to me then and gave me a hug, putting her arms round my waist and pressing her head into my chest. ‘I’m really sorry about your mum and dad, Travis. If there’s anything I can do . . . I mean, if you want to talk about anything . . . well, you know where I am.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I mumbled, feeling a little bit embarrassed, but kind of good too.

  She let go of me and stepped back, and I stood there smiling at the three of them. They looked like a bunch of misfits and outlaws, and I suppose in a way they were. But as we stood there together that day, baking in the afternoon sun, there was no one else I’d rather have been with.

  20

  ‘So what are you doing here, Mason?’ I said, tugging at my front wheel again.

  ‘Looking for you,’ he replied, helping me with the wheel. ‘I heard you were living with your nan and grandad now. We were on our way out to see you. Why the hell did you ride off when you saw us?’

  ‘I didn’t know it was you, did I?’

  ‘Who did you it think it was? Is someone after you?’

  ‘Possibly . . .’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Well, it’s kind of a long story.’

  I gave the wheel another hard yank and it finally came free. I straightened up, getting my breath back, and glanced over at the Nissan. Rap music was thudding quietly from inside, and a skinny young guy was sitting in the driver’s seat smoking a cigarette and nodding his head to the music. I realised now that when I’d shot off down the hill and turned right into the lane, Mason must have guessed I was heading for Nan and Grandad’s along the footpath, and rather than following me down the lane he’d told the driver to carry on along Long Barton Road and then take a right to cut me off at the crossing.

  ‘Who’s the guy in the car?’ I asked Mason.

  ‘They call him Toot,’ Mason said. ‘He’s all right. Not that sharp, but he’s a good driver.’

  ‘Nice car,’ I said, grinning. ‘Really classy.’

  Mason shrugged. ‘It’s a car.’ He looked at me. ‘So what’s this long story all about then, Trav? Who do you think’s been following you?’

  I didn’t tell them the whole story, but I told them enough to put them in the picture. I wasn’t surprised to find out that Mason knew all about Bashir Kamal – there’s very little that Mason doesn’t know – and when I mentioned Evie Johnson, it turned out that he knew her too. He’d known her since she was a kid.

  ‘Evie’s cool,’ he said, nodding his head. ‘You can trust her. If she said she saw Bashir with a couple of suits in a car, that’s what she saw.’

  ‘Have you heard anything about Bashir?’ I asked. ‘Any rumours or anything?’

  ‘The word on the Slade is he’s in Pakistan. Something to do with a sick grandmother.’

  ‘Do you believe it?’

  ‘It’s possible, I suppose. Kind of odd that he’d just pack up and go so quickly though, especially with his big fight coming up. There was something a bit weird about the way the word spread so fast as well. I mean, usually when a rumour goes round the estate, it starts off pretty slowly, with just a couple of people knowing about it, and then it gradually gets bigger and bigger, until eventually it reaches a certain point, and then it just kind of explodes, and everybody knows about it. But this rumour about Bash going to Pakistan was different. It was like one minute no one knew anything, and then – BAM! – the next minute it was all over the estate. Do you know what I mean?’

  I nodded. ‘I’m pretty sure he’s not in Pakistan.’

  ‘Really?’

  I told Mason about finding Bashir’s passport.

  ‘Doesn’t necessarily mean he’s still in the country,’ Mason said. ‘It’s not hard to get a false passport.’

  ‘Why would he travel on a false passport?’

  ‘You tell me. You’re the detective.’ He paused for a moment, thinking about something. ‘Let me see those pictures you told me about.’

  I showed him the printout and the photo of the man at the funeral.

  ‘This is the guy,’ he said, tapping the printout.

  ‘What guy?’

  ‘This one,’ he said, pointing to the man with short dark hair and a goatee beard. ‘That’s the guy I came here to tell you about.’

  21

  Mason hadn’t taken part in the riot that had smashed up all the shops and offices in North Walk. He’d known it was going to happen, he told me, and he knew just about everyone who had taken part in it, but he hadn’t been there himself.

  ‘I knew your mum and dad’s place was probably going to get looted,’ he told me, ‘and although I couldn’t do anything to stop it, I didn’t want to be part of it. I thought about letting you know it was going to happen, but I couldn’t really see what good it would do. I guessed you had more important stuff t
o deal with anyway. I mean, you’d only just lost your mum and dad . . . I thought it was best to leave you alone, you know?’

  The four of us were sitting together on a wooden bench just down the road from the crossing. I’d asked them if they wanted to come back to Nan and Grandad’s place with me, but Mason said he had to get going quite soon as he had ‘a bit of business’ to sort out back at the Slade.

  ‘I thought the whole thing was a stupid idea anyway,’ he went on. ‘I mean, if you’re going to go looting and ransacking, at least make sure you’re doing it somewhere that’s got something worth stealing.’ He shook his head. ‘I mean, there’s nothing in North Walk. It’s just little shops and offices and stuff. Why bother smashing them up? There’s no point. It’s just mindless vandalism, isn’t it?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ I said, not really sure what he was trying to say.

  Mason looked at me. ‘It was organised, Travis. Everyone on the Slade knew exactly when and where it was going to kick off. It was all planned. You don’t plan mindless vandalism, do you?’

  ‘I don’t get it,’ I said, shaking my head.

  ‘Neither did I at first,’ Mason told me. ‘That’s why I started asking around. That’s how I heard about this guy, the one in the picture.’ Mason took out his mobile, tapped the screen, then held it out for me to see. The photograph showed a man in a suit coming out of a low-rise block of flats. It was the dark-haired man with the goatee beard. ‘That was taken on the Slade two days before the riot,’ Mason told me. ‘From what I’ve been told, the guy in the suit was just coming out of a meeting with a guy called Drew Devon. They call him Dee Dee.’ Mason looked at me. ‘Have you heard of him?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Dee Dee runs pretty much everything on the Slade. He’s a very powerful guy.’

  ‘I still don’t get it,’ I said, frowning. ‘What’s all this got to do with the riot?’

  ‘The word on the street is that the guy in the suit paid Dee Dee to arrange it.’

  ‘Arrange what?’

  ‘The riot.’

  ‘He paid for a riot?’

  Mason nodded. ‘I mean, I can’t prove it or anything, but that’s what it looks like to me. One of the kids who was there that night told me he’d only gone along with it because Dee Dee’s guys told him to. I’m pretty sure that some of the older kids were paid good money to make sure the riot went ahead.’

  ‘You think they were paid by Dee Dee?’

  Mason smiled ruefully. ‘Well, he wouldn’t have paid them from his own pocket personally, he would have got someone else to do it. But, yeah, I think Dee Dee was probably behind it. The guy in the suit paid him, he paid his guys, and they sorted it out.’

  ‘Why would the guy in the suit want a riot?’ I said, looking at Mason. ‘Why would anyone want a riot? It doesn’t make sense, does it?’

  ‘It didn’t until I saw this,’ Mason said, studying the printout of the photo again. ‘Now I’m beginning to think it makes perfect sense.’ He held his mobile over the printout, positioning it so that the photograph of the man on his phone was right next to the image of the man in the printout. ‘It’s definitely the same guy, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I agreed.

  ‘And your dad took this picture when he was trying to find Bashir Kamal?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘So the men in your dad’s picture have got something to do with Bashir going missing, and one of them paid Dee Dee to organise the riot in North Walk, which just happens to be where your mum and dad’s office is.’ He looked at me. ‘Do you see what I’m saying?’

  ‘No,’ I admitted.

  He looked at Jaydie. ‘Do you get it yet, Jay?’ She nodded.

  He smiled at her, then turned back to me. ‘What if your mum and dad had some kind of proof that these guys in suits were involved in whatever happened to Bashir? And what if the suit guys knew your mum and dad had proof, and they guessed it was in their office, but they didn’t want to just break in and steal it because eventually someone might notice it was missing, and that might look suspicious.’

  ‘Right,’ I said, getting it now, ‘but if it went missing with a load of other stuff when the office was smashed up and ransacked during a street riot, no one would ever know.’

  ‘Exactly,’ Jaydie said.

  I looked at her.

  She smiled.

  I turned back to Mason. ‘So who’s the guy who paid Dee Dee?’

  ‘No idea,’ he said. ‘I’ve asked around, but no one knows anything about him.’

  ‘Dee Dee knows who he is,’ I said. ‘Why not ask him?

  Jaydie stifled a giggle.

  ‘What?’ I said to her. ‘What’s wrong with that?’

  ‘He’s Dee Dee,’ she said simply. ‘You can’t just knock on his door and start asking him questions.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because you can’t,’ she said, frowning at me as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

  I looked at Mason. ‘You know all the right people, don’t you? I mean, surely you could get to see him.’

  ‘My influence only goes so far, Travis. I mean, yeah, I know a lot of people, and a lot of people know me. But asking me to call in on Dee Dee is like asking you to call in on the prime minister or the Pope or something.’ He shrugged. ‘It’s just never going to happen.’

  ‘Maybe I could try talking to him?’ I suggested.

  ‘Yeah, right,’ Mason said dismissively. ‘And while you’re at it, you could try growing some wings and flying to the moon as well.’

  We carried on talking things over for a while, trying to work out who the men in the pictures could be, and if they were connected to the men in the Audi. But by the time Mason said he had to get going, we hadn’t really got anywhere.

  ‘I’ll keep asking around, OK?’ he said, getting to his feet. ‘I’ll let you know if I hear anything.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I told him.

  ‘Keep in touch, yeah?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Anything you need, any problems, just call me.’

  I nodded.

  Jaydie hugged me again before she went, and then Big Lenny gave me a pat on the shoulder – which almost knocked me off the bench – and the three of them walked back to the Nissan and got in. The engine revved loudly, the big exhaust roaring like a jet, and the car pulled away and sped off down the road. I watched it go, then got back on my bike and headed off towards Nan and Grandad’s house.

  22

  After I’d had tea with Nan and Grandad and Granny Nora – who was well enough to come downstairs for once – I went to my room, lay down on my bed and tried to make sense of everything I’d found out. It was really difficult. I had so much information in my head, so many things that people had told me, so many thoughts and feelings and possibilities . . . it was just too much. I knew that it all meant something, that everything was somehow connected, but I just couldn’t fit the pieces together. It felt like I had a jumbled-up jigsaw puzzle floating around in my mind – a three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle with some of the bits missing. Every time I thought I was getting somewhere with it, fitting a couple of pieces together, I’d suddenly realise that the colours didn’t match or the bits didn’t really fit together or something, and then I’d have to start all over again.

  I lay there for a long time, just staring at the ceiling, lost in the puzzles inside my head.

  I don’t know what time it was when Grandad came up to see me, but I remember realising that it was getting dark outside, the night sky streaked with a crimson sunset, so it must have been around nine o’clock, maybe nine thirty. I’d given up trying to think about things by then, and for the last half-hour or so I’d been sitting on my bed playing chess on my laptop. I’d thought about playing something else, but I didn’t really feel up to shooting people or managing a football team, and although I’m not much good at chess, it always seems to help me when I’m trying to sort out stuff in my head. Chess takes your mind away to another place
. And while you’re in that place, focusing on the complexities of the game, the rest of your mind is free to concentrate on the stuff that needs sorting out.

  That’s how I see it anyway.

  I was just about to lose the game I was playing when Grandad knocked on my door. I had a queen and a rook left, but my opponent had a queen and two rooks, and it was only a matter of time before the extra rook got the better of me. So when I heard Grandad knock on my door and call out softly – ‘Are you awake, Trav?’ – I was quite happy to close the game without saving it, telling myself that I hadn’t really lost, I’d just been interrupted.

  I’d already noticed at teatime that Grandad was looking a lot better, and as he came into my room that night I could tell from the way he was walking that he was almost back to himself again. He wasn’t shuffling any more, his shoulders weren’t stooped. He had an air of confidence about him.

  ‘How’s it going?’ he said, crossing over to the window.

  ‘Well, you know . . .’

  He looked at me, nodding slowly. ‘Yeah, I know.’

  ‘How are you?’ I asked him.

  ‘Not too bad, thanks.’ He sighed and looked out of the window. ‘Listen, Travis,’ he said solemnly, ‘I’m sorry I haven’t been here for you over these last couple of weeks. It’s not because I didn’t want to—’

  ‘It’s all right, Grandad,’ I said. ‘You don’t have to explain.’

  ‘No, it’s not all right,’ he said sadly, shaking his head. ‘This is the worst time in the world for you. It’s the worst time for all of us, but I should have been with you. Every day, every hour, every minute. But I wasn’t. That’s unforgivable.’

  ‘Nothing’s unforgivable, Grandad,’ I said. ‘Dad told me once that if you really love someone, nothing’s unforgivable.’

  Grandad smiled. It was the first time I’d seen him smile in weeks. ‘Your dad always did have a way with words, didn’t he? Even when he was a little kid he could talk his way out of almost anything. It used to drive his mother mad sometimes.’ He grinned at the memory. ‘I remember once, when your dad came home from school one day with his clothes all ripped up and covered in mud . . . this must have been when he was about six or seven, maybe a little older . . .’