A Thousand Cuts

by Simon Lelic

  Don got his knee. I got his ankle. Not quite simultaneous but near enough. The sound it made was like ice cubes. You know, like when you drop ice cubes in a warm glass of Coke.

  I got up. Don got up. Bumfluff stayed down. He was squealing again. Actually, he was screaming. He was on his back and he was writhing. He had one hand on his leg and his other arm across his eyes. The crowd, they were cheering so I suppose the ball must of gone in. But it felt like they were cheering for us.

  Grunt was closest. I don’t know whether he saw it but he thought he did. He collars us. He’s like, you boys, what the hell do you think you’re doing? And we’re like, what, what, let go you twat, let go. Bickle blows his whistle. He’s still blowing it when he reaches us.

  What’s going on here? Mr Grant. Mr Grant!

  And Grunt’s shaking us and sort of growling and he’s looking at Bumfluff on the floor but it’s like he doesn’t want to let us go.

  I dunno, sir, goes Don. I dunno. And he’s holding out his arms, you know, like players do on the telly when they’re about to get carded by the ref.

  They did it on purpose, goes Grunt. You little thugs. You did it on purpose.

  And it’s like Bickle notices Bumfluff for the first time, even though he’s screaming still and crying probably and making more racket than the crowd.

  Did you? he goes. Did you do it on purpose?

  And I shake my head and Don’s like, course not, sir, we were going for the ball. It was fifty-fifty.

  And Bickle looks at Bumfluff and he looks at Grunt and he looks at Bumfluff again. Let them go, he says. Let them go, Mr Grant.

  But Mr Travis—

  I said let them go. And he sort of turns away but then stops and spins back. And see to Szajkowski, will you? He’s making a fool of himself. He’s making a mockery of this game.

  And we jog away and we pass Terence and he’s just fucking smiling. He knows what we’ve done and he’s glad. As far as he’s concerned, Bumfluff’s lost him the match. Which is bullshit of course, they’d of lost with Gordon Banks in goal, but that’s what Terence thinks. So he’s smiling and he even gives Don this little wink.

  It was that easy. I mean, I couldn’t believe it. Don says later, he’s like, no sweat, Gi, what could they of done? And he was right I spose but I was still expecting a fuss, like a warning or a detention or even a fucking suspension, I mean we snapped his fucking leg. But we didn’t get so much as a yellow. Bumfluff got stretchered off, the caretaker went in goal, Don scored two more goals and in the end we won nine-nil.

  So that’s it. The end. Can I go now?

  .

  we R watchN U. evN f U cnt c us we cn c U

  The blind was halfway closed and the overhead lights were off. She almost did not notice him shaking. She stood for a moment by the doorway and then made her way past him to the window.

  ‘Do you mind?’ she said. He raised his head and turned to look at her. She waited but he said nothing. She pulled at the cord and the slats of the blind flipped wide. Dust scattered, fleeing the daylight. Elliot’s father recoiled.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Lucia and she angled the slats so that the light was less obtrusive. ‘Are you too hot? Would you like me to open a window?’

  Again he did not respond.

  ‘What about a drink? Can I get you some more water?’

  This time he croaked a reply. ‘I’m fine,’ he said. ‘Really.’

  Lucia nodded. She hesitated, then moved around the table into his eye line. ‘May I?’ she said and she pulled out a chair. In her hand she held a transparent plastic bag. In the bag was a mobile telephone, a silver Motorola with a colour screen. Lucia sat down. She placed the phone on the table. Elliot’s father looked at it, then looked away.

  do aL gingrs smeL of piss?

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. Her hands were resting on the table in front of her. She pulled back, allowing her hands to drop into her lap. Then she lifted them again and this time placed her elbows on the surface, her chin in the crevice between her thumb and forefinger. Finally, she let her forearms fold downwards and clasped her midriff with her palms. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said again.

  wot hapnd 2 yor fAc? how lng til U dI of cancer??

  ‘Since when?’

  ‘I don’t know. Since he started. I don’t know.’

  ‘But these were recent. They were sent recently.’

  ‘Maybe he deleted the others. I don’t know. Probably he deleted them. Wouldn’t you?’

  ‘You didn’t suspect, though.’

  ‘We thought he was making friends. We were pleased. We thought… I don’t know what we thought.’

  ‘He didn’t say anything.’

  ‘No. Nothing. They just used to arrive. He would read them and he would look at the screen for a while and then he would put the phone back in his pocket. Until the next one came.’

  ‘Did he reply?’

  ‘Yes. No. I don’t know. I thought he did.’

  ‘It doesn’t look like he did. Not to these.’

  ‘Then he didn’t. I guess he didn’t.’

  ‘It looks like they were sent from a website.’

  ‘A website. Which website?’

  ‘There are dozens of them. We’re looking into it but we won’t find anything. We won’t be able to prove who sent them.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘You’ve said that. You’ve already said that.’

  f U dont wash dat tng off yor fAc we R goin 2 cut it off

  The room was small but he had wedged his chair under the table and created an area in which to pace. He waved an arm and hit the blind without meaning to. As he spoke he spat.

  ‘They hounded him. They fucking hounded him.’

  Lucia watched. She waited.

  ‘It’s not bullying. It’s worse than bullying. It’s mental fucking torture. That’s what it is.’

  He knocked the blind again and then turned on it, swiping at it this time as though it had goaded him. Something fell on to the floor: the valance. He swore. He picked it up. He stood holding it and he looked at Lucia. There was spittle at the corner of his mouth.

  Lucia waited. She watched.

  He dropped the valance and he wiped his sleeve across his face. He turned and pressed his forehead against the ragged blind, followed by his palms. The room darkened. Lucia closed her eyes.

  f U ask any1 4 hlp we wiL burn yor hows

  She pressed the evidence bag smooth against the table. Air bubbled in a corner as she ran her hand from one side to the other and she was reminded suddenly of skin blistered by the sun. She moved the bag to one side.

  There was nowhere else to look so she looked at Elliot’s father. He held the mobile phone in front of him, his elbow on the table, his thumb twitching as he scrolled. His other hand was across his mouth. Periodically he muttered, shut his eyes, allowed his hand to drift up to his forehead and down again. He had known what to expect when he had asked to look again at the texts. Like Lucia, he was probably already able to recount them by now in the order in which they had been sent, down to the syntax and the spelling so outlandish to his generation. Looking at the screen, though, he would be able to suffer what his son had suffered. He would be able to suffer and his suffering would for an instant displace his grief.

  Njoy yor vzit 2 d hospital. I hOp dey mAk U beta so we cn fck U up agen

  Lucia carried in two coffees. ‘It’s got caffeine in it,’ she said. ‘That’s the best I can say for it.’

  Elliot’s father took the paper cup that Lucia had brought for him. He muttered his thanks, shook his head when Lucia offered the crumpled packets of sugar she held in her palm.

  She sat. She looked at her notes, checked her watch, glanced across. Elliot’s father had his hand wrapped around his cup. Lucia’s was so hot she could barely hold on to it long enough to lift it to her lips. He was gripping his and he was staring at his fingers.

  ‘I need to ask you something,’ Lucia said.

&nb
sp; Elliot’s father finally withdrew his hand. ‘I thought that’s what you’d been doing.’

  ‘Something else.’ Lucia closed her notebook. ‘Something I don’t necessarily expect you to answer.’

  He shrugged. He took the lid off his coffee and vapour burst from the cup, intensifying the smell within the room of burnt coffee beans. He set the lid upside down on the table.

  ‘Why would you send him back?’

  Now he looked at her, his expression rigid.

  ‘I mean, forget about the text messages. You didn’t know. But after what happened. After what they did to him. Why would you even consider sending him back?’

  For a moment he held her eye. Then he looked again at his coffee, replaced the lid and slid the cup away.

  ‘Do you have children, Inspector?’

  Lucia shook her head.

  ‘Brothers with children? Sisters? Do you have friends with children?’

  ‘No. I don’t.’

  ‘Then you have no idea.’

  It seemed like he would say no more. Lucia lowered her eyes.

  ‘I work here,’ Elliot’s father said. ‘In the City, I mean. My wife, she doesn’t work. I earn some but not a lot. More than a police detective, I would imagine, but unlike you I have four mouths to feed.’

  ‘Four?’ said Lucia. Elliot’s father flinched and Lucia realised the implication of what she had said. ‘No, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that…’

  He looked at the table and rubbed his forehead.

  ‘It’s just, I didn’t know,’ Lucia said. ‘I assumed it was just the three of you.’

  ‘We have a daughter,’ said Elliot’s father.

  Lucia recalled the bicycle in the hallway of their house, the one that had seemed too small for Elliot. ‘She’s younger,’ Lucia said. ‘How old is she?’

  ‘She’s nine.’

  ‘What’s her name?’

  ‘Sophie. Her name’s Sophie.’

  Lucia nodded. She liked the name but she stopped herself from telling him so.

  ‘I was saying,’ said Elliot’s father, ‘that I work here. I have to work here. If we could leave London we would but we can’t afford to. And because we can’t leave, we have to make the most of where we are.’

  ‘I don’t follow.’

  ‘Property. Public services. Schools, Inspector. We don’t have a great deal of choice so we do what we can with the choices that we have.’ He paused. He sighed. ‘It’s a good school. The results, the tables: compared to the alternatives it’s the best we could manage for him. That’s why we bought a house in the catchment area. For Elliot’s sake. For Elliot’s sake and also for Sophie’s.’

  ‘For Sophie? You said she was nine. Isn’t that what you said?’

  ‘She’s nine but she’s getting older. Children do that, Inspector. ’

  There was scorn in his tone, which Lucia ignored. She tapped a fingernail against the side of her cup.

  ‘It’s changing status,’ Elliot’s father continued, less aggressive now. ‘The school is. Did you know that? They’re talking about private funding, more autonomy. It’s on some government scheme.’

  ‘Scheme?’ said Lucia. ‘What kind of scheme?’

  ‘A pathfinder scheme, they call it. A public-private partnership. The school: it’s one of the first. So it’s the best that’s available to us and it’s going to get better. And it will be more selective. It will be able to pick and choose. If we took Elliot out, there’s no guarantee we’d be able to get Sophie in.’

  Lucia shook her head. ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘They’re siblings. If the brother is in already, they have to admit the sister.’

  ‘That’s not what I mean,’ Lucia said. ‘What I mean is, I don’t understand why you would want to. Academically, it’s a good school. Fine. But your son was attacked. He was beaten and cut and he was bitten. Why would you want to send your daughter there as well?’

  Elliot’s father raised his hand to the bridge of his nose. She noticed that his eyes, already bloodshot and ringed by shadow, were glistening now. He screwed them tight, then stretched them wide. He brushed away the single tear that escaped.

  ‘We thought… ’ he said and stopped. He cleared his throat. ‘We thought, after what happened. I mean, the boy who died, the boy that teacher killed. He was one of them, wasn’t he? I know, I know: no one saw anything. But everyone knew about him, didn’t they?’

  ‘Donovan,’ Lucia said. ‘Donovan Stanley.’

  Elliot’s father nodded. ‘We weren’t going to at first. Send him back, I mean. But after what happened… We thought that would be the end of it.’

  ‘You thought he would be safe.’

  He nodded again, emphatically. ‘And when we looked at the alternatives, Inspector. The other schools. Some of them… You just wouldn’t. You just couldn’t. And there was Sophie of course. We had to think of Sophie.’

  not a wrd. kEp yor gingr mouf shut

  ‘Cuts. Bruises. Nothing he might not have got from playing football.’

  ‘Did he play football?’

  ‘No. He didn’t. But that’s not the point.’

  ‘What is the point?’

  ‘The point is, it was nothing serious.’

  ‘So you did nothing?’

  ‘No! Christ. What do you take us for? Of course we did something.’

  ‘What? What did you do?’

  ‘We spoke to Elliot, for one thing. We spoke to the school.’

  ‘What did Elliot say?’

  ‘Nothing. He wouldn’t say anything. I mean, he said he fell over.’

  ‘And the school? Who did you speak to at the school?’

  ‘We spoke to the headmaster. I did. I told him what we thought was happening. I asked him to keep an eye on Elliot.’

  ‘And what did the headmaster say?’

  ‘He said I shouldn’t worry. He said, in his experience, all kids get into arguments at Elliot’s age. All kids have their little scuffles.’

  ‘Scuffles.’

  ‘That’s right. But he said he would keep an eye on things. He said he would ask his staff to keep an eye on things.’

  ‘And what happened?’

  ‘I don’t know. Not a lot, I guess. Things didn’t get much better but they didn’t get any worse. They didn’t seem to anyway. We didn’t know about the text messages.’

  ‘And later? What about later?’

  ‘Later?’

  ‘After Elliot was attacked.’

  ‘I’m not sure I follow.’

  ‘What did the headmaster say then?’

  ‘Nothing really. I mean, what could he say? What could he do? There were no witnesses, Inspector. Remember?’

  kill yorself. f U cum bak yor ded NEway

  He was on his feet. There was nothing to prevent him leaving yet he lingered. His hands clasped the back of his chair. Lucia noticed the skin around his fingernails. Strips had been gnawed away, leaving tracks of exposed flesh and traces of blood.

  ‘There’ll be publicity,’ Lucia said. ‘The press, the reporters. They’ll latch on to this. They’ll latch on to you.’

  Elliot’s father nodded.

  ‘Because of the school mainly,’ Lucia said. ‘Because of what happened.’

  ‘The teacher. The shooting.’

  ‘That’s right. You should warn your wife. Your daughter too.’

  ‘I will,’ he said. ‘I have.’

  Lucia bobbed her head. She waited. Still Elliot’s father did not move.

  ‘It will die down eventually,’ Lucia said. ‘If they can’t find an angle, if they can’t find a link. They’ll move on to something else.’

  ‘Yes. I expect they will.’

  ‘But if I can help. In the meantime. I don’t know what exactly. But you know where I am.’

  ‘Thanks. Thank you.’

  Lucia stood. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘Really, I’m most desperately sorry.’

  Elliot’s father cleared his throat. He patted his pockets. He s
canned the table. ‘Right then,’ he said. And he left.

  The room was dark again, this time because the shadow of the building opposite had reached outwards. It had worked its fingers through the gaps in the blind and wrapped the furniture and the floor and the walls in its grip.

  we R watchN U. evN f U cnt c us we cn c U

  Lucia sat alone. She held out the mobile phone in front of her, her thumbs resting on the keypad. She scrolled.

  do aL gingrs smeL of piss?

  She imagined Elliot, seated in the same room as his family but wrenched by the words on the screen into a place of loneliness and terror.

  wot hapnd 2 yor fAc? how lng til U dI of cancer??

  She tried to decide what she would have done in his place. She tried to decide but she realised that in fact she had already decided. Like Elliot, she had chosen to trust in denial, to confide only in herself, to try to cope with what others inflicted upon her without help of any kind.

  f U dont wash dat tng off yor fAc we R goin 2 cut it off

  And why? Because the help that was on offer was no help at all. Elliot had been wise to the reality in which he was caught. His parents were well meaning but ineffectual. His friends, if he had any, were probably just as well meaning but weak. There was the school of course; just as for Lucia there was the chain of command. But like Lucia, Elliot had known better than to even try.

  f U ask any1 4 hlp we wiL burn yor hows

  Samuel Szajkowski had tried. He had tried more than once. That he had tried was perhaps the only thing that might have slowed his soul on its descent.