Joint Judgement (An Emma Harrison Mystery Book 3)

by Wendy Cartmell

  But that wasn’t an attitude that Billy could take himself. He had to view everyone as innocent until proven guilty through forensic evidence and interrogation. He had to hang on to his principals even though no one else in the education block was hanging onto theirs, or even had any.

  Chapter 30

  Walking back into the art room, Billy knew that the next step was to get Jack Walker’s body out of the block, so it could be examined properly. Looking at Memphis, still doing his bouncer bit by the door, he wasn’t looking forward to the conversation. But it had to be had.

  ‘Memphis,’ said Billy as he reached the door. ‘I think it’s time to get Mr Walker out of here. What do you say?’

  ‘Why? What good is that going to do?’

  ‘It may be that further forensic examination of his body could help us decide who killed him.’

  ‘Can’t you do it on your own?’ Colby sneered. ‘Fat lot of good you are then.’

  Refusing to be needled, Billy kept his voice calm. ‘It’s got nothing to do with that, Memphis. Proper examination of his clothes and his body could help a lot.’

  ‘Oh you mean an autopsy, like.’

  ‘Yes, exactly. What do you say?’

  ‘Not a chance, mate.’

  ‘Buy why? If nothing else, it’s disrespectful to keep him here. Give him the respect he deserves and let his body go.’

  After a pause, Colby said. ‘No. Not going to happen. All the while we’ve got him and you here, we’ve got bargaining chips, see?’

  Billy could understand that. But Colby had been co-operative so far. Why was he sticking on this point?

  ‘But if you let him go, you’ve still got me.’

  ‘Doesn’t make any difference. Neither of you are going anywhere. Understood?’ Colby took a menacing step towards Billy.

  Holding his hands up, Billy had to say, ‘Alright, alright, I get it.’

  He was still wondering at Colby’s refusal when a commotion outside made them break their staring match and both turned to see what was going on. Hands had begun banging against the art room windows and a chant was gathering momentum and volume.

  ‘Out. Out. Out. Out.’

  ‘Seems the lads want out,’ Colby said unnecessarily. ‘How about it, Forensic? Isn’t it about time you let them go? After all they can’t get out and take a walk down to the shops, or make a break for freedom, can they? What do you say?’

  Turning back to Colby, Billy said, ‘Not a chance, Memphis. What was it you said? Oh yes - they can be my bargaining chip.’

  Pushing past the sneering man Billy walked into the heart of the block, running a gauntlet through the crowd to a table which was pushed against one wall. Clambering up he looked down on the throng. They were getting fired up and were now clapping in time with their chanting.

  ‘Out. Out. Out,’ they kept shouting, taking absolutely no notice of Billy whatsoever. Fuck it, Billy thought, and put his fingers in his mouth, emitting an ear piercing whistle; his army habits once more coming to his aid. He’d lost count of the number of times he’d had to whistle to get the attention of someone who was out of hearing, or a group of recruits who were going the wrong way in their inexperience. It worked then and was working now.

  Gradually the boys stopped their shouting and looked up at him. Their tipped-back heads mostly had sneers on their faces. Some were fleetingly interested and some looked at the floor as if too guilty to look Billy in the eyes.

  ‘I know that it’s pretty boring, all this waiting around,’ Billy began.

  ‘Too right it is. Why not let us out then?’

  ‘Because I’ve not finished my investigation.’

  ‘Bit bloody slow aren’t you?’ quipped one joker, who was rewarded with a few laughs.

  ‘Actually, the investigation is going as well as can be expected.’

  ‘What the fuck does that mean?’

  ‘It means I’ve collected some evidence and am waiting for a few answers. But at the moment it is by no means conclusive.’

  ‘Eh? Speak English!’

  ‘I still need some help,’ explained Billy. ‘What would really assist me, is that if anyone saw anything, anything at all, they should come and talk to me.’

  ‘Why should we do that?’

  ‘Because if you don’t, and I don’t find enough forensic evidence, everyone in this block with be charged with murder, under the umbrella justice scheme.’

  ‘But that’s not fair! We thought that you were here to stop that!’

  ‘Yeah,’ shouted a few voices at once.

  ‘I’m doing the best I can,’ said Billy. ‘But I desperately need eye witnesses. One or more of you must have seen something in the art room this morning that would help me.’

  ‘You mean you want us to snitch?’

  ‘We’re not snitches; we’ve told you that before!’

  Shaking his head at the stupidity being displayed by the collective behaviour, Billy could do nothing more than say, ‘If anyone knows anything, please come and see me. I’m sure there must be some amongst you who believe in doing the right thing. And the right thing here is to help me with this investigation. I can assure you that I don’t want to be here anymore than you do. And any help you give me, or the police, could go a long way towards helping your own situation. Surely a good mark on your file is a lot better than a black one, especially when it comes to parole boards. So, just think about that, while you’re cooped up in here instead of back in your cell relaxing and watching the telly.’

  But the only response Billy got to his little speech was a lot of muttering as the boys turned their backs on him and wandered off. So much for his motivational speech. Billy could have hit something in his frustration, but instead stuffed his hands in his pockets and strolled back to the art room, which was fast becoming a prison cell of his own.

  Chapter 31

  As Billy watched the crowd through the art classroom window, he started to notice a difference in the boys’ behaviour. Instead of continuing to mill around in the central area, a few began to drift towards their classrooms. He had no problem with them going to the English, computer, and the mathematics rooms to finish off any work the teacher had given them, as it would keep them occupied and hopefully out of trouble. But he couldn’t let anyone into the cookery room. Or the art room, come to that. Not that anyone would want to voluntarily go anywhere where there was a dead body still lying in the middle of the floor. He hoped. Anyway, Memphis Colby was still guarding the door, so that room should be safe for now.

  A sudden thought had Billy running out of the art room and over towards the cookery classroom, whilst digging in his pocket for the teacher’s keys that Chief Robinson had given him. For the life of him he couldn’t remember if he’d locked the door or not. He distinctly remembered locking the knife cabinet, but not the classroom door. Pushing through the boys who had congregated by the cookery room, he could hear the blood pumping in his ears. He tried to pull out his keys, but they became stuck in his pocket. Tugging at them with shaking hands, he heard the sharp rip of the material as the keys came loose. His hand flew out of his pocket and his trembling fingers dropped the bunch of keys onto the floor. Billy looked at them in horror and sweat broke out on his brow. As if in slow motion he saw an arm poking out from the crowd, reaching for the keys, which broke through his impotent staring, and Billy dropped to the floor, covering the keys with his body. The resultant kicks as the crowd jostled, trying to get away from him, were nothing compared to a potential knife in the back.

  Once he had enough room, he clambered to his feet, brushing down his clothes and ineffectually trying to tame his hair with his fingers.

  ‘Can we go in?’ one of the boys closest to Billy asked. ‘We want to finish off our cooking, like. Only the door’s locked.’

  Sweet Jesus, thought Billy, that was a close one. He wasn’t prone to making mistakes, for they potentially got you killed in the Army, but his fatigue was catching up with him and fogging his brain, making him sl
uggish and slow to respond. The last couple of weeks had been hell as he’d been working 24-7 on a big fraud case. It seemed he’d only just fallen into bed earlier that morning, before Emma had phoned and asked for his help. No way could he have turned her down, but getting out of bed that morning had been hard, as his body had screamed for rest.

  ‘No, sorry,’ he said to the boy. ‘You can go in any other classroom but this one and the art room.’

  ‘But why? There’s no one in there.’

  Not wanting to draw attention to the knife cabinet, Billy said, ‘Because I haven’t finished processing the room yet. So sorry, but the answer is still no.’

  ‘Fucking prick,’ mumbled the boy. But despite the graphic expletive he’d thrown at Billy, he and his friends moved away from the door.

  Billy then walked the few paces back to the art room where there was a group of boys talking to Memphis Colby.

  ‘They want some stuff out of the room,’ Colby told him, ‘So they can start sketching or summat.’

  ‘How about it, Billy?’ Aiden asked. ‘It wouldn’t do any harm and it would keep us occupied.’

  ‘What do you want?’ Billy asked.

  ‘How about some sketch pads and pencils and charcoal,’ Aiden said. After a pause he added, ‘Please?’

  Billy weighed up the request. On the one hand he didn’t want anything removed from the crime scene, but on the other, it was better that the lads had something to do. It would focus their minds and stop them having paranoid thoughts or picking fights out of boredom.

  ‘Alright,’ he said, ‘But I’ll get them.’

  Walking into the room, he saw a pile of pads in a corner and grabbed them, along with a handful of pencils and a couple of boxes of charcoal. Thrusting them into grabbing hands at the door he said, ‘You can go over there in the corner,’ indicating a space at the end of the classroom wall.

  ‘Thanks, Billy,’ Aiden called, as they all meekly followed his instructions.

  ‘What about us?’

  ‘Sorry?’ Billy turned to Memphis Colby, who was standing just inside the classroom with another boy, who looked to be a cardboard cut-out of Colby. Both stood there with chins in the air, their muscles bulging as they flexed their hands.

  ‘We want our stuff.’

  ‘And what stuff is that?’

  ‘Those aerosol cans. We’ve been working on a mural,’ said Colby’s double.

  In Billy’s mind aerosol cans meant one thing - sniffing to get high. He didn’t know if that applied to spray paints, but he certainly wasn’t about to take a chance that it did. So the answer had to be a very emphatic ‘no’.

  ‘And you are?’ Billy asked.

  ‘Dukes, Wade Dukes.’

  ‘Well, sorry Wade, but that won’t be possible at the moment,’ Billy tried reasonable persuasion. ‘I wouldn’t like anyone to be affected by the fumes, now would I? And we’re not talking about supervised use here, not with just one of me and over 50 of you.’

  But the voice of reason seemed to have developed a sore throat, as Dukes didn’t appear to hear Billy and squared up to him.

  ‘Are you going to stop me then?’ Dukes challenged and pushed him in the chest with his hands, causing Billy to steps backwards.

  ‘There’s no need for…’ But Billy didn’t have a chance to finish his sentence as Dukes made a swing for him, fist clenched in parody of a boxing jab. Easily ducking out of the way, Bill then threw a right hook, catching the boy squarely on the chin and sending him flying backwards. He landed with a thump on the floor.

  Looking down at Wade, who was blinking rapidly and clearly wondering what the hell had just happened, Billy said, ‘Where I come from, no means no, alright?’

  Wade nodded in agreement, shaking his head and trying and failing to get up off the floor. Memphis went to help him and then pushed the staggering boy out of the room, a new respect for Billy shining in his eyes. But all Billy had done was to be flexible and wear different hats with different inmates. The Aiden’s of this world understood reasonable argument, but Memphis and his cohorts had only one language, that of violence. Which was a language Billy could speak - in spades.

  Chapter 32

  Glad that everyone seemed relatively quiet for now, and to some extent gainfully occupied, Billy took a moment to look around. He’d quickly come to realise that not everyone was the same inside. That you couldn’t give a blanket description of the boys who were incarcerated at Reading HMYOI and either on remand or serving sentences. They might look the same in terms of clothes and hair (almost everyone had short hair) but their personalities were very different, as were their backgrounds and their crimes. It was also interesting that, completely unbidden, the majority of the boys had wanted to get on with their studies, despite the strangeness of the morning. But then again, Billy guessed that there had to be some interest in education on their part, as hadn’t Emma said something about education being paid less than work? Alternatively, it was arguably an easier gig being in a classroom rather than the kitchen or cleaning the wings. But Emma must be doing something right with her push for ‘education for all’. For the moment at least, it seemed that the lads here had more than a passing interest in their studies.

  But it appeared that the peaceful hiatus wasn’t to last. Raised voices could be heard coming from the maths classroom in the far corner of the block. His interest piqued, Billy walked across the central area towards the room as a boy came running out of it. Seeing Billy, he rushed towards him, chased by an angry swarm of his peers. Cannoning into Billy he just had the chance to gasp, ‘I know who did it!’ when they were both enveloped by a scrum and pushed over, the boy landing on top of Billy as they hit the floor with a thud.

  Disentangling himself, Billy managed to get to his hands and knees and leaned over the prone figure of the boy who had a message for him. It seemed that someone had at last decided to do the right thing and tell what he knew. But the boy wasn’t stirring. Billy wondered if he had hit his head when they fell and had been temporarily knocked-out, but then he noticed a spreading stain on the boy’s tee-shirt that looked suspiciously like blood. Putting his hand on the stain on the boy’s back, Billy’s hand came away full of red sticky stuff. Shit. Just when it looked like he might be taking a step forward in the investigation, he’d been outwitted. His words may have had some effect on the boy now lying prone on the floor, but it appeared that the prison mentality of not ‘snitching’ was still very much alive and well. It was all too much for Billy.

  Clambering up and standing tall he raged against the boys. ‘So this is your answer to someone trying to do the right thing, is it?’ he shouted at them. ‘Really? Do you seriously think that violence is the answer to everything?’

  His breathing had increased and his fists itched to retaliate, but he knew he couldn’t do that. Not with the crowd against him. A one to one with the likes of Duke was an altogether different proposition than a lone fighter up against a mob.

  ‘This is not the way forward,’ he continued to shout. ‘This brave boy had the courage to stand up for what he thought was the right thing to do. By telling me who had killed Jack Walker, he was proving that he was more a man than any of you are,’ his arm swept the crowd, encompassing them all.

  Muttering and shuffling of feet seemed to show that he was getting through to some of them at least.

  ‘What’s his name?’ Billy asked, trying hard to calm down by focusing on helping the injured boy. He glanced down, but the injured boy still wasn’t moving.

  ‘Stan Smith,’ Aiden, said and pushed through the crowd to stand beside Billy.

  As he did so, the boys started to move away, leaving one lad stood on his own. Billy recognised him as Ethan Hall, who still didn’t look any better than he had earlier. He was sweating and trembling, causing the weapon he had in his hand to shake and drip blood onto his trainers.

  Billy turned to Aiden. ‘Go and get a pair of gloves and an evidence bag from the art room would you,’ he said, all the while loo
king at Ethan. He then took a couple of steps forward, towards the young man. ‘It’s over now, Ethan, you can drop that now.’

  Ethan looked at his hand, his mouth and eyes widening in disbelief. He opened his fingers, letting the sharp shiv fall to the floor. ‘I… I… I didn’t mean…’ but Ethan couldn’t say anything else and fell to the floor himself, kneeling, covering his head with his arms and sobbing.

  Hearing running behind him, Billy turned to see Aiden coming with the requested gloves and bag. ‘Put the gloves on and the weapon in the bag would you? Then take it to the art room and put it in my case.’

  As Aiden scurried to do his bidding, Billy quickly examined Stan Smith and then called over to Memphis Colby, ‘Get on the radio. Stan’s still alive and we need a doctor - now!’

  Chapter 33

  When the call came, Dr Fox was still trying to bring some order to the chaos that was the hospital wing. They’d had to wait until Titas had been taken out under close guard, still struggling against his captors, still frightened and angry in equal measure, despite the injection Fox had eventually managed to give him. What the hell Fox was supposed to do with Titas going forward was anyone’s guess. He could now understand why the doctors at the previous institution had kept him medicated up to the eyeballs. They weren’t stupid. They had realised their limitations, and Titas’ limitations come to that, and done what they had to do. Geoff’s face burned with embarrassment as he thought about his stupidity and failings as a doctor.

  The ringing of the telephone broke his reverie and he grabbed at it gratefully. Anything was better than berating himself.