The Child Who

by Simon Lelic

‘She was my girlfriend.’

  Leo stared. ‘Sorry?’

  ‘She was my girlfriend. She, you know. Loved me and that.’

  For ten, twenty, thirty seconds, Leo made no sound. Then, ‘Were you there, Daniel? Is that…’ He breathed. ‘Is that what you’re telling me?’

  ‘I… Yeah. Sort of.’

  ‘Sort of?’ Leo stepped towards the table. He held the back of his chair but did not sit down. ‘What happened, Daniel?’

  The boy shuffled. ‘We… we kissed and stuff.’

  ‘You kissed. Meaning, she consented?’

  Daniel frowned.

  ‘Did she let you kiss her?’

  ‘I told you: she was my girlfriend.’

  ‘Daniel, I—’

  ‘We did it all the time. And other stuff. Proper stuff. Like in films.’ The boy’s expression was a challenge but as he spoke he seemed to flush.

  ‘Proper stuff? What do you mean by that?’

  Daniel, this time, looked away. ‘Sex,’ he said and he slid a little deeper into his chair.

  This time it was Leo who glanced towards the camera. ‘Did you have sex with her, Daniel? Is that what you’re saying?’

  The boy took a moment to answer. ‘Loads,’ he said, concentrating now on his hands. ‘But, um. Not this time. She… she was worried. She didn’t wanna kid.’

  ‘She didn’t want to get pregnant?’

  ‘Right. So instead, this time, we did other stuff. Like, with sticks and that.’

  Leo covered his mouth with his hand.

  ‘But…’ Daniel shifted straighter. ‘There was someone watching. A perv or whatever. She spotted him. The girl… er… Felicity, did. She told me to get off and when I didn’t cos I didn’t see the perv she did this.’ The boy pointed to the marks on his neck. ‘By accident.’

  ‘By accident.’

  There was a silence.

  ‘And then?’ Leo sighed. ‘What happened then, Daniel?’

  Daniel jerked a shoulder. ‘I left.’

  ‘You left.’

  The boy nodded.

  ‘And this man. The one you saw—’

  ‘I didn’t see him.’

  ‘You didn’t see him?’

  ‘Uh uh.’

  ‘What then? Only the girl did. Felicity. Is that what you’re saying?’

  Daniel nodded again.

  Leo dragged his chair further from the table. He lowered himself onto it and caught his elbows with his knees. He looked at the sole-stained linoleum. ‘You said you left.’ He raised his head. ‘Why did you leave, Daniel?’

  Once again the boy shrugged.

  Leo waited. ‘Okay,’ he said, after a moment. ‘What about Felicity?’

  The boy, this time, turned away.

  ‘When you left,’ Leo persisted, ‘was Felicity…’ He coughed. He tried again. ‘In what state did you leave her?’

  Silence.

  ‘Was she alive, Daniel? Was Felicity alive when you left her?’

  This time the boy spoke but Leo did not catch the words.

  ‘I’m sorry, Daniel, I didn’t hear what you—’

  ‘She was alive. Okay? That’s what I’m trying to tell you.’ There was something in Daniel’s expression that reminded Leo all of a sudden what the boy was capable of.

  Leo backed slightly away. ‘No, I know, I just wanted to—’

  ‘You don’t believe me. Do you? You’re just like all the rest of them.’

  Their time was almost up. DI Mathers and DC Golbas would by now be gathering their notes, their props, their wits, ready to settle things one way or another but quite unprepared, Leo suspected, for what they were about to hear.

  ‘Look,’ Leo said, ‘Daniel. All I can say, as your solicitor – as someone who is here to help you – is that if you did what the police think you might have done, it would be better… it would be better for you to admit it. If you lie, and they catch you in that lie, the consequences – the punishment – will be all the greater.’

  ‘I’m not lying.’ The boy’s voice was taut to the point of tears.

  Leo showed Daniel his palm. ‘I’m not saying… No one’s accusing you of that. Not yet. But things get confused. They get mixed up. It’s perfectly natural that you should be worried, that you should be scared, that you should be looking to find some—’

  ‘I’m not scared either!’ Daniel’s hands, Leo saw, were curled and bloodless. His cheeks were blotched with red.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Leo said. ‘I’m not putting this very well. What I’m trying to say is, when they come back in here, the police are going to charge you. It’s either that or let you go and they’re not going to let you go. They have evidence, Daniel. Solid evidence. And your story… This story… It will only make things—’

  ‘You asked me what happened. Didn’t you? And I told you. Didn’t I?’

  ‘I did. You did. But—’

  ‘So why can’t you just tell them?’ the boy said and the door behind Leo clicked open.

  5

  Something detonated against the glass and Leo dived. He peered up and saw only sky, as well as what looked like a bleeding sun.

  ‘Jesus!’ he said and someone, somewhere within the car, echoed it. The driver? Daniel’s stepfather?

  Leo straightened and tried to see beyond the haemorrhaging egg yolk. The street, a somnolent sequence of shops until the corner before, had rounded into a throng. Young men mostly, Leo thought at first, and clearly in the wrong place, directing their ire in the wrong direction. These were anarchists, anti-capitalists, fascists, anti-fascists. Something was happening, obviously, that Leo had not known about – surprising perhaps that it should occur in Exeter of all places but unsurprising that Leo was so out of touch. He had not looked at a newspaper in days; not at a story that was not somehow connected to the case. And yet, here, there: a pushchair. A mother chanting as she held her son. And over there: schoolchildren. Three, four of them; two girls, two boys; his daughter’s age and – yes – in his daughter’s uniform. Not, like Leo, caught up inadvertently but bawling and baying like the rest of the crowd. Schoolchildren. Just schoolchildren. And as Leo looked it was one of the schoolboys who threw another egg.

  Again Leo ducked but the missile, this time, missed by a car’s length. Something else hit, on the roof it sounded like. In the seat behind Leo’s, Daniel’s mother screamed: a counterpoint to the baritone boom of the impact. And, ‘Jesus!’ said the voice again. It was not the driver: a policeman and trained, Leo hoped, for this sort of thing. Daniel’s stepfather, then, in the back beside the boy’s mother. Leo turned, hugging his cheek to the velour upholstery.

  ‘Who are these people?’ said Stephanie Blake. With her eyes drawn wide, Leo could see gaps, like wrinkles, in her makeup. She had slouched in her seat and her skirt, too short already for a visit to court, had risen halfway up her nylon-trussed thighs. ‘Vince? Vince! What’s going—’

  ‘What the hell is happening?’ said Vincent Blake. ‘Where the hell are you taking us?’ He was seated behind the driver so had no choice but to focus his outrage on Leo.

  Something hit Blake’s window and he spun. His pinched face turned pale. The man had a nose crooked like a brawler’s and a crease, across it, extending below his eye but there seemed nothing intimidating – nothing tough – about his appearance now. He slid towards his wife, forcing her closer to the nearside door.

  ‘Sit tight,’ said the driver and Leo turned back to face the front. The policeman, a youthful, earnest constable, was doing his best to appear stoical but there was tension in his grip, ten to two, on the steering wheel. ‘This might get rocky,’ the young man said.

  It was an understatement. The crowd through which they had already passed was only the fringe of the mob outside the courthouse. There was a cordon of yellow-clad officers along the kerb but their line was bedraggled and beginning to fray. Just as the van – Daniel’s van – turned to make its final approach, the string of policemen snapped.

  The protesters swarmed. Th
ere must have been two, three, four hundred people gathered and the men in front – and it was, here, mainly men in front – led the charge. The convoy – a police car, the van, another marked unit and finally Leo with Daniel’s parents – had been moving at a brisk speed but now the lead driver had no choice but to press his brakes. The procession slowed, then stopped, and the protest turned into a siege.

  A dozen men, then a dozen more, surrounded Daniel’s van. They launched kicks at its bodywork and threw fists at the glass as though the pain they would be feeling in their toes and knuckles would somehow disseminate towards their prey. Someone swung a placard but in slow motion because with the sign it would have been like trying to swing an oar through water. The man turned it instead and used the pole end as a club.

  ‘Daniel!’

  The boy’s mother had wedged herself between the two front seats. Her scarlet nails were clawing Leo’s shoulder but when he winced she paid no heed. Her attention was on the scene ahead: on the van, which was beginning to sway. Just lightly but the momentum was building, the efforts of the protesters coalescing. They would tip it. In a moment, the van would be on its side.

  Leo tried to picture the boy. Seated between two policemen, would he be reaching for one of their hands? Would he be crying, like a twelve-year-old ought?

  ‘For Christ’s sake!’ Blake had displaced his wife between the seats. ‘Why aren’t we moving? Just drive, will you? Just go!’

  ‘Vince!’ Stephanie was trying to pull her husband to her side. ‘Sit down, Vince, please!’

  ‘You!’ Blake said, prodding the driver. ‘Put your foot down. Just drive through them – it’s their own damn fault!’

  The policeman turned. ‘Sit down, Mr Blake!’

  Blake fell away. He swore. He was starting forwards again when another impact tipped him back. It was not a missile this time but a body, splayed across the windscreen. Even the driver recoiled. His hands were locked to the wheel but his head was tight against his seat as he stared at the face confronting his. It belonged to a kid: a student, Leo guessed – hair bedraggled, skin pitted, expression ecstatic in righteous fury.

  ‘Move!’ the driver hissed. ‘Bloody move!’

  He was talking to his colleagues, Leo realised – the drivers in the vehicles ahead. It was the student who obeyed. He slid from the bonnet until he was standing and then seemed somehow to convulse. His body curved and whipped forwards and something splattered against the windscreen. It was a bilious, viscous green. Leo heard himself sound his disgust.

  Their car became engulfed. Leo could barely see the van now, although he could tell it was still, somehow, upright. That explained, perhaps, why the mob had transferred its attention along the fleet. The student, for instance, had gathered his friends. There was a group of five or six of them on the driver’s side, all teeth and fingers and flob. One in particular seemed enraged by Daniel’s stepfather. He was bawling, pounding against Blake’s window.

  ‘Is this reinforced?’ Blake said, scrabbling for safety. ‘This glass! Is it bulletproof?’

  He received no answer. Beside him, Daniel’s mother was hunched and sobbing, fists bunched below her chin and knees tight to her belly. Someone – Leo could see only a thick, bare forearm – had attached themselves to the handle of her door and was tugging to try and prise it open. The door, though, held firm and the arm, its owner, seemed to fall away – until Stephanie shrieked and Leo saw, through his window, what she saw: a man growling through the glass and grasping in his reddened knuckles a piece of wood the shape and length of a baseball bat.

  Leo jerked back as far from the window as his seatbelt would allow. He fumbled for the catch to free himself. He found it, or thought he did, but when he pressed it his seatbelt held firm. He looked, finally, at what he was doing and saw he was pressing the wrong button: the driver’s belt had come free but Leo’s remained clipped in place. He struggled, wrenched his body, but the more violently he moved, the tighter the seatbelt held him. And the man outside, filling the glass now, had the wood raised level with his shoulders. He had his torso turned and his feet set: ready, Leo realised, to swing.

  He pressed himself deeper into his seat. He closed his eyes. He braced himself for the sound of shattering glass, for the shards to pierce his skin – but instead he heard a shout.

  ‘Finally!’

  Leo looked: at the policeman beside him, then back at the window. He expected to see his assailant, the plank of wood on its downward path. The man, though, was gone. In his place was a curtain of yellow, drawing itself around the car. There was space, too, up ahead. A metre, then two, then road – clear road – where the car in front had pulled away.

  Theirs was the last vehicle into the courtyard but the first to reach a stop and immediately Leo was out, on his feet, pacing and puffing and pressing at his temples with his palms. He could hear echoes of the scene outside the gates and the bellows of officers within. Someone nearby was swearing: at subordinates, perhaps; at a situation they had collectively failed to expect.

  Daniel’s mother emerged next, followed by her husband. Stephanie was silent but Daniel’s stepfather was, indiscriminately, making his fury plain.

  Leo offered Stephanie his arm. She staggered, then took it.

  ‘Are you okay?’

  Daniel’s mother made no reply. Her head was in her handbag, a cigarette already hanging from her lips. She was shuffling manically – for a lighter, Leo assumed, and though he no longer smoked, he frisked himself for something that might help.

  ‘Jesus, Stephanie.’ Daniel’s stepfather, from his stance, seemed finally to have found himself a target. ‘Your family’s almost torn to pieces and all you can think about is getting yourself another fix.’ He sneered and Leo stared, until the driver stepped between them.

  ‘Here,’ he said, a match in his fingers aflame. Stephanie lurched but her cigarette fell. The driver lit his own and passed it to her and she dragged as though coming up for air.

  ‘Okay?’ said the driver this time. He looked at Stephanie, who managed a nod, and then at Leo.

  Leo could only shake his head. ‘Who were all those people? Surely they weren’t all here for—’

  ‘Daniel!’

  Leo saw the boy, beside the van and struggling against a policeman’s grip. A second officer touched his colleague’s shoulder and Daniel, with that, found himself free. Once again his mother called his name and he hurtled across the courtyard towards her. He was sobbing, Leo saw. Snot-stained and streaming, he streaked past his stepfather, who was lighting up himself now, and into his mother’s arms. The force of him nearly toppled her but she caught him, her balance too, and she squeezed as though to smother him. As she did the boy spoke but Leo could not make out the words. A single phrase, more than once, stifled by his mother’s embrace. It was only when she held him away – to wipe his eyes, to scour him for sign of harm – that Leo was able to hear.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Daniel was saying: again and again and again.

  6

  ‘Leo.’

  He could not stop pacing. Out of habit he had removed his shoes but he still had on his coat and even his scarf and he was explaining, or trying to, but the difficulty was knowing where to start.

  ‘Leo. Leo!’

  He jiggled his head, held up a hand. ‘And honestly, Meg. They brought pushchairs. Pushchairs! One woman, she had her toddler with her. She was holding him up like… like, I don’t know… like he was a placard. Ha! Right, just like that. She had him here, like this, and in her other hand she had an actual placard, a sign, and it said—’

  ‘Leo, please. Just listen for a moment.’

  ‘– it said shame, just shame, just that single word: shame. And there were others too, like this one I saw that said, what was it, it said—’

  ‘Leo!’

  Leo stopped. He stared at his wife, who covered her mouth with her hand. She shut her eyes.

  ‘Meg?’

  ‘Please, Leo,’ she said, opening them. ‘Please,
just listen. Just for a moment.’

  ‘What? What is it?’ Leo frowned. He reached for his wife’s hand.

  Megan pulled away. ‘It’s Ellie.’ She folded both arms, then let them drop.

  ‘Ellie? What about Ellie? Is she okay? Where is she?’ Leo spun towards the hallway but Megan reached and anchored him in the kitchen.

  ‘She’s fine, Leo. I mean, she’s not hurt. They didn’t hurt her.’

  ‘What? Who hurt her? Where is she?’ Again Leo made for the stairs.

  ‘Leo! I said they didn’t hurt her. She’s not hurt. She’s just upset, that’s all.’

  ‘Upset? Why is she upset? What happened, Megan, tell me!’

  ‘For pity’s sake, Leo!’ Megan glared until Leo fell still. ‘She came home without her coat,’ she said. Leo was about to interrupt but his wife held him off. ‘Her blouse, her white school one, it was covered in… I mean, it looked like she was covered in…’

  ‘In? In what?’

  ‘Blood. It looked like blood.’

  ‘Jesus Christ! I thought you said she—’

  ‘She’s fine! Honestly, Leo, she’s not hurt.’

  ‘But the blood! What then? Are you saying it wasn’t hers? Whose was it? Jesus, Meg, why didn’t you—’

  ‘It wasn’t hers. It wasn’t anyone’s. It wasn’t blood, Leo. It was ink.’

  ‘Ink?’

  ‘That’s what she told me. Ink. Red ink. But honestly, when she walked in that door… I mean, she was crying, or trying not to, and her shirt, her hands, her face: she was covered in this… this stuff. It was like… a dream. A nightmare, rather. Like every nightmare I’ve had since you came home with this blasted… Since, probably, that poor girl…’

  Leo shook off the digression. ‘How did it get there? Why the hell was she covered in ink?’

  ‘She wouldn’t tell me. Obviously someone threw it at her but—’

  ‘Someone threw it at her!’

  Megan made a face. ‘Of course someone threw it at her. What did you think? That she tripped in the stationery aisle at WH Smith?’

  ‘No. I mean… No. But who… Why the hell…’