I glance at Jed. He has the same pink spots in his cheeks that Granny gets when she’s upset.
Priti lets out a long breath and I’m sure she’s about to say something bad about Uncle Ian so I butt in quickly. ‘Jed, you don’t look too good,’ I say. Which he actually doesn’t, but that’s not really the point. ‘We should get you home.’ I give Priti a significant look because, after all, she still thinks he’s dying.
Jed doesn’t even bother to disagree. He clambers down the tree and I follow him although he doesn’t look grateful or anything.
‘See you later?’ I say to Priti.
‘Whatever,’ she replies.
Then me and Jed troop across the road. Uncle Ian has gone and the pretty lady reporter follows us. ‘Has anyone ever approached you? Are you made to feel welcome by the Asian families who live around here?’ But we just keep walking in silence.
When we get through the front door, Jed turns to me straight away and says fiercely, ‘It’s just because my dad cares about me, you know!’
And he looks like he really needs me to agree with him, so I say, ‘Yeah, I know.’
AUGUST 13TH
Uncle Ian’s comments were on the news last night and in all the papers today (not that his name appears – the reporter kept her word on that). And what he said seems to have started something cos suddenly all the newspapers are talking about racial tensions in the area and the reporters start asking questions about Priti’s family and the people who were at the wedding. More reporters turn up and they bring up the story about Said being stabbed and Tyreese’s brother being beaten up, and the fight at the parade. And somehow or other they seem to know that Mik was in a fight that night – although I don’t know how they can have found this out.
Stevie’s mum and dad are on the TV again, doing another press conference. And this time it’s Stevie’s mum who does all the talking. She looks right at the camera and she has her hand on her bump the whole time she’s talking and she reads from a piece of paper where she must have written down what she wants to say.
‘We appeal to the Asian community to help us find our child,’ she says as camera flashes go off all around her, making her look blotchy red and yellow. ‘If one of you knows where my angel is, I beg you to not close your ears to our pleas for help just because of the colour of her skin.’ (I can’t help thinking how Stevie is almost as brown as Priti at the moment – perhaps Priti was right when she said that colour is not about skin at all.)
‘Relations between the Asians and the whites around here may not have been too good in the past,’ she goes on, ‘but this is a child’s life here. We appeal to all the Asian people to help us – if any of you knows something, please come forward. Cos Stevie is only a kid, no matter what colour her skin is.’
‘Well, that’s done it,’ says Grandad.
‘They’ll be making speeches in parliament now,’ laughs Uncle Ian, who’s watching it with us. ‘Good on her! Somebody needed to say what we’re all thinking.’
‘But there’s no proof that the abductor was Asian,’ says Granny.
‘Bound to be,’ says Uncle Ian. ‘That’s what those men go for, isn’t it? They want their own wives all wrapped up like mummies and a nice little blonde bit on the side.’
‘She’s a child, Ian!’ says Granny.
‘So do you really think Stevie was taken by one of the Asians?’ asks Jed.
‘Think about it, son. You start moving these people into a neighbourhood and the crime rates soar. It’s a fact, innit?’ says Uncle Ian. ‘The detectives know that same as us. They’ll find whoever did it soon enough.’
‘Don’t be so sure,’ says Grandad. ‘What about that little girl who went missing abroad? Couple of years ago now. They never found out who got her.’
‘Reckon the British police are a bit better than the foreign lot, don’t you?’ says Uncle Ian. ‘They’ll find her.’
‘Really?’ says Jed.
‘Course, son,’ says Uncle Ian. ‘And when they do, they’ll find some piggin’ Asian behind it all. I’d put money on it.’
* * *
After Uncle Ian leaves, I find Jed sitting in Grandad’s gardening shed, listening to his iPod.
‘Your dad’s gone,’ I say.
He takes his earphones out and stares at me. ‘Has he?’
‘Didn’t you want to say bye to him?’
He shrugs.
‘My mum reckons you should always say goodbye.’
‘She probably never said goodbye to your dad properly or something, that’s why.’
I stare at him and imagine doodling a black rain cloud over his head.
‘Did your dad say that?’ I ask.
‘Maybe.’
‘And you believe him.’
‘Course. We always tell each other the truth.’
‘Why didn’t you tell him you’ve been seeing your other gran then?’ I say.
He looks up. ‘Why don’t you tell Granny you don’t want to go home?’
‘Because I do want to,’ I reply.
‘Yeah? I reckon if you did, you’d have called your mum by now.’
‘Not everyone hates their mum like you do!’ I say.
‘Look, your dad got to die and be the hero. Lucky him. Cos it’s a lot easier not to mess up when you’re dead.’
And he puts his earphones back in and I just stand there, staring into the shed filled with Grandad’s gardening stuff – stuff he never uses. Then I kick the shed door and walk away.
At bedtime I ask Granny if I can ring Mum now she’s home. ‘Of course you can,’ she said.
But I don’t.
AUGUST 14TH
There’s going to be big service in the city cathedral on Sunday to say prayers for the family of Stevie Sanders. Granny asks if we want to go, but me and Jed both say no. Granny and Grandad agree to stay at home and watch ‘The Service for Stevie’ on the twenty-four-hour news channel instead. ‘It’ll be heaving and I’m not one for crowds,’ says Granny. Grandad just says, ‘Hmmph!’
We’re all in the sitting room, watching the news with the sound off. (Grandad doesn’t want to miss any developments, but Granny doesn’t want the TV on all the time.) We’ve just had lunch so within about five minutes both grandparents are asleep.
Me and Jed go and hang out in the garden. I’m drawing some more Bomb-busters strips. Jed is kicking his football against the kitchen wall, even though Granny always asks him not to, and humming the tune to Match of the Day over and over, getting a little louder each time.
I draw a picture of Stee-V tied to a giant aerial on the top of a skyscraper with a bomb belt strapped round her waist. ‘Heeeelp! ’ says the speech bubble coming out of her mouth.
Eventually, I say, ‘Why didn’t you want the police to know that you and your dad went back to the park after we saw your mum?’
Jed doesn’t even turn his head in my direction. ‘We didn’t see anything, that’s why.’
‘You were gone for ages. You must have seen something.’
He just shrugs and keeps humming.
‘Was Stevie still there when you left?’ I ask.
‘I can’t remember,’ says Jed.
The counter on Stee-V’s explosive device reads, 10 . . . 9 . . . 8 . . . 7 . . .
‘You must remember something,’ I say.
‘Well I don’t,’ he says. ‘Here, give us a look.’
He snatches the notebook out of my hands, flops down next to me on the step and stares at the picture of Stee-V for what seems like ages.
‘What do you think?’ I say.
‘Yeah, it’s good,’ he says distractedly. ‘Have you done any more of her?’
‘Who?’
‘The Stevie kid.’
‘A few,’ I say. ‘She’s in the new storyline.’
Jed flicks through the most recent pages of the pad. ‘Look,’ he says. ‘If I tell you something, will you promise not to tell anyone?’
‘I suppose so.’
‘Cos I don’
t know if I can trust you not to go running straight to the cops. Do you swear on your mum’s life not to tell anyone?’
I think about my mum, back at home, making a cup of tea in the kitchen, laughing with Gary, pale coral lipstick sparkling on her lips. ‘I can’t do that,’ I say.
‘Then I’m not talking,’ says Jed.
I hesitate. ‘OK then,’ I say. I think of her turning to look at me, smiling, her eyes full of life again.
‘On your mum’s life?’
‘On my mum’s life.’
‘OK, it was like this.’ Jed talks really low, like someone will hear us. ‘That day in the park. Stevie was still there when I went back. And I was going to tell her to bugger off back to the party, but then Mik came along and he was dead angry.’
‘What happened then?’
‘Mik told the bikers to clear off, but they started throwing bottles at him.’ Jed keeps bouncing the ball between his knees as he talks. ‘I probably shouldn’t be telling you this.’
‘I said I wouldn’t tell anyone, didn’t I?’ I say, trying to push the image of my mum’s face to the back of my mind. ‘Did they hurt him?’
Jed bounces the ball a little harder. ‘No, but one of the bottles nearly hit Stevie, so she hid in one of the pipes.
I imagine Stevie hiding in the pipe, covering her ears so she can’t hear the sound of smashing glass.
‘What happened then?’
He keeps staring down and, apart from his hands on the ball, he is totally still. ‘Then Zara comes running out of the woods and she’s crying and her top is all ripped and Tyreese comes after her, shouting stuff.’
‘What did Mik do?’ I ask.
‘He started to go for Tyreese. But then Tyreese pulls out this knife and says he’ll carve Mik up if he tries anything. Just like he did to his cousin.’
‘Is that what he said?’
‘Zara was crying and telling him to stop and then Mik pulls out a gun.’ Jed stops bouncing the ball.
I don’t know what I was expecting him to say, but it wasn’t this. ‘A gun?’
Jed doesn’t look up. He’s holding the ball tightly in two hands. ‘He starts waving it around, saying he’ll shoot if Tyreese takes another step.’
‘Was your dad there all the time?’
‘No,’ Jed releases the ball and starts bouncing it again. ‘He arrived when Mik was waving the gun around. He told me to get the hell out of there, so I legged it down the alleyway.’
‘Did Stevie run away too?’
‘No, she was still in the pipe when I left.’
‘And your dad?’
‘I didn’t see him again after that.’
I stare at Jed, but he doesn’t look up. The ball keeps marking out a nervous rhythm on the patio stone.
‘Why didn’t you tell the police any of this?’
‘My dad told me not to.’
‘When?’ I ask.
‘Later.’
‘When later?’
‘Just later,’ he says.
And then we hear the patio door open. ‘They’ve only gone and arrested that lad next door,’ Grandad is saying. ‘Come on or you’ll miss it.’
‘Remember, you promised,’ Jed hisses. ‘You can’t tell anyone. Not even Priti.’
‘I promise,’ I say. And I can see my mum’s face again, smiling, happy.
It turns out the police did find something when they combed the park – that’s why they’re taking Mik in for questioning. We watch them escort him out of the house. First we watch it live, then we see it again on the TV and for the first time we can see how badly beaten up he is. The whole left side of his face is swollen – red, black and blue – and one eye is completely closed. He walks uncomfortably, like he’s in real pain. The photographers crowd round the police car to take pictures.
‘Why don’t they question him at home if he’s not a suspect?’ asks Jed.
‘Priti would know,’ I say.
But we haven’t spoken properly to Priti for a couple of days – and I kind of miss her.
‘Dad says we need to keep an eye on her,’ says Jed. Uncle Ian called last night to talk to Jed.
‘On Priti?’
‘On her whole family. He reckons they might be into child-trafficking. White kids. Better than a bomb, he reckons. Make a few little white kids disappear and you destroy the confidence of a community.’ Jed doesn’t look at me as he says this. He’s flicking through my notebook, but he doesn’t seem to be actually looking at the pictures.
‘Mik looked pretty bad, didn’t he?’ I say.
‘Did he?’ Jed shrugs.
‘Did you see him get beaten up then?’ I whisper.
‘I told you. I’d gone before it all kicked off.’
He doesn’t say any more after that, but he looks uncomfortable. My big, cool, unflappable cousin looks almost – what? – scared? And now I’m sure that he’s lying.
AUGUST 15TH
This morning, there’s a little group of people at the bottom of the close holding banners with pictures of Stevie and slogans like, ‘Give her back!’ and, ‘Pakis stole Stevie Sanders’. Grandad says we should take them tea and sandwiches, but Granny won’t let him.
She won’t let us go over to Priti’s house either, although when Jed asks if this is because Mik has been arrested, Granny says, ‘He’s not been arrested. He’s been taken in for questioning.’
But then we see Priti snaking her way through the reporters to get across to our house. For some reason she’s wearing a sari and a headscarf, although she’s still got her wheelies on, so some things don’t change.
‘They’re like flaming piranhas out there!’ she says, after Granny shows her up to our bedroom. ‘Thanks, Mrs Evans,’ she says, pulling off her headscarf and giving Granny her best smile.
Granny just nods and I don’t know if I’m imagining it, but I can’t help thinking she isn’t quite so friendly to Priti as usual.
‘What’s happening?’ I ask.
‘They took Mik in for questioning.’
‘Yeah, we know that,’ says Jed, who’s staring out of the window with the binoculars and acting like he’s not really listening.
‘And a policewoman is talking to Zara. They know she was in the park. They want to know what she saw.’
‘What did she say?’ I ask.
‘She still says she wasn’t there, but they know she’s lying.’
‘What’s going to happen to her, do you think?’ I say.
‘My dad will go mad if he finds out she was with Tyreese. And, even worse –’ Priti looks almost excited when she says this – ‘Tyreese got Mik taken in by the police.’
‘How?’
‘It turns out Stevie is Tyreese’s cousin of some sorts.’
‘No way!’ I say and even Jed looks like he’s vaguely interested in this new piece of information.
‘Yeah, her mum and his dad are cousins or something.’
‘But it’s not like Mik knew that,’ I say.
‘I know, but Tyreese says he did and that Mik kidnapped Stevie as revenge cos he reckoned Tyreese had stabbed Said. Cousin for a cousin sort of thing.’
Jed puts down the binoculars, but he doesn’t say anything.
‘So what’s going to happen now?’ I ask, glancing at him.
‘Well, for a start, Jed’s going to tell the police what he saw when he went back with his dad so the police can get their story straight,’ says Priti.
‘What?’ Jed spins around so quick he almost falls off the windowsill.
‘You must have seen what went on,’ Priti says. She’s got a no-nonsense look on her face and her hands are on her hips. ‘You can tell them he’s innocent,’ she says. ‘And so can your dad, if he’s not bent on trying to frame Muslims.’
‘My dad is not bent.’
‘No, but he is a racist bigot!’
‘He is not!’
‘Whatever. You have to clear Mik because they’ll find out you’re lying eventually.’
‘Zara
could tell them,’ says Jed. ‘She saw what went on too.’
‘So you did see it then!’ Priti says triumphantly.
‘Maybe. But so did Zara. She can tell the police.’
‘Two reasons why not – one, she’s not going to tell my mum and dad she was making out with a biker or they will kill her, literally kill her. Two, she left the park long before you did.’
‘Mik already knew about Zara and Tyreese,’ says Jed angrily. ‘He could have told your parents any time.’
For perhaps only the second time since I’ve known her, Priti is lost for words.
I imagine doodling a speech bubble above her head, filled with rows of question marks.
‘He was going on about it that day,’ Jed continues, ‘like he’d known for ages.’
‘I don’t get it,’ I say.
Priti still has her mouth open, like a fish. Now in my head I’m doodling flippers and a fin and air bubbles rising up out of her mouth.
‘He was going on like, “I don’t say nothing about your little meetings with my sister in the woods, but you lay another finger on her and I’ll kill you!” that sort of thing,’ says Jed.
‘So Mik knew Zara was meeting Tyreese in the park all along?’ Priti says quietly. She looks like her brain’s working really hard to figure it all out.
‘Mik must have seen that he’d hit her though,’ she says.
‘Who hit her?’ I say. ‘Why?’
‘Tyreese,’ says Priti. ‘Zara told me that when she tried to end it, Tyreese got rough with her.’
‘So that’s why Mik got his gun out?’ I say.
Jed glares at me.
‘Mik had a gun?’ For the second time in five minutes Priti looks gobsmacked.
‘Jed saw it,’ I say, ignoring the looks he’s giving me.
Priti glances at Jed, who just shrugs.
There’s a pause in which I can almost hear the cogs in Priti’s brain turning. ‘How did they manage to beat him up then?’ she asks.
I’ve been wondering this too. Because even if the gun had no bullets or was a fake, how would the bikers have known? And they wouldn’t have taken him on if he was waving a gun.
We Can Be Heroes Page 22
