by Kate London
Her mother had stood by her, always. Actions, not words: surely that was what mattered. Not feelings. Not a lack of ease. Such things were quibbles, not available to her any more.
In the first days after Lizzie had been stabbed, as she had passed in and out of consciousness in the hospital, she’d been aware of her mother sitting beside her. Reading. Worrying. The nearness of death had created some kind of unspoken resolve between them. It was the dodged-a-bullet thing; they had been given a second chance. They would be better. Kinder. They would try harder.
It was in this golden capsule of time that she had told her mother she was pregnant. There had been no recriminations, no real hesitation. ‘OK, I’ll try to help,’ her mother had said.
The plan had been that she would buy a small flat near her daughter. But the family house didn’t sell and it was a miracle really that as the reality of helping Lizzie had emerged – endless train rides and a fold-out bed in the living room – she had stuck to her promise without complaint.
But Lizzie’s sister, Natty, had been less obliging. Lizzie would not forget the revelation of her feelings.
Congregated in the unsold family home, Natty and Lizzie had been clearing away in the kitchen. Through the conservatory windows came the sights and sounds of the three cousins playing in a paddling pool, watched over by their grandma in slacks and a stripy T-shirt. There was a smell of hot laundry. Unstacking the dishwasher and still in the glow of early motherhood, Lizzie had mumbled something – complacent, probably, not thought out, yes, definitely – about being grateful to Natty and Mum and all that, and her sister, bent down in homage to the tumble dryer, had slammed the door shut and stood up, her arms full of T-shirts and pants and babygros.
‘Christ. You really have no idea, do you?’
‘What—’
‘You’re so bloody selfish!’
‘Natty, please. I just need help. I didn’t plan any of this.’
‘Plan it? God forbid you should ever plan anything!’
Lizzie was just starting off with the ‘it’s not my fault’ speech when Natty interrupted, each fold she made in a child’s shirt or vest delineating her anger.
‘God, Lizzie. What are you thinking? Mum, moving to London now?’ A babygro added firmly to the neat stack. Another taken from the warm intermeshed pile on the table, crackling and submitting beneath Natty’s angry hands. ‘After all those years looking after Dad. Don’t you think she deserves a break? This is her last chance to start again. Have you ever given that a second’s thought? Have you ever thought what might be good for her? You never ever think of anyone but yourself.’
Tears were pricking behind Lizzie’s eyes, but to give way to them would be selfish too. Luckily there was a loud howl from the garden. The sisters turned to the window. Natty’s daughter, Lauren, was struggling to her feet in the water, red-faced and crying. Her brother, Sebastian, gave her what was clearly another shove in the chest, and she fell back and howled again.
‘Bloody hell.’ Natty threw down her daughter’s tiny blue pedal-pushers and stomped out.
Lizzie watched her sister, now squatting in front of Sebastian, holding him by the upper arm and talking firmly. Lauren watched too, tear-stained but definitely pleased with how things were going. And Lizzie’s mum? In a world of her own, drinking her coffee while Connor poured water endlessly down a red plastic water mill. Her tummy had the curve and spread that came from pregnancies and the menopause. The skin on her well-kept hands was thin and inelastic.
It had been like seeing her mother for the first time. Lizzie had felt remorse, resolved again to do better, to be better.
Now she carried Connor back into the kitchen and looked briefly at the dirty high chair and the unwashed breakfast things. She’d be all right. She’d get Connor to the childminder and be in time for work. The tidying could wait until she got home.
6
An hour later and DC Lizzie Griffiths, now smartly dressed, logged onto her computer. Kirk and Jason, the other DCs on duty from her team, were pulling their jackets off the backs of their chairs and heading to the local café.
Ash, the team’s acting detective sergeant, said, ‘Come on! It’ll all still be here when you get back.’
Lizzie smiled and lied. ‘No thanks. I’ve already had breakfast.’
Ash was wearing his charity shop suit. He proudly left the brown shop label – Sue Ryder, £7 – safety-pinned to the inside pocket so that he could show it to any detective fool enough to display the alarming symptoms of personal ambition.
He tutted. ‘All work and no play …’
She fiddled in her warrant card and produced a five-pound note. ‘Bring me back a flat white, would you?’
She smiled and disciplined herself not to look at her screen until they were through the door, chattering and joking as they made their way along the corridor towards the back door. Once she would have been one of them – a fun member of the team who could work into the night with no consequences. Now she had to battle to stay on top of her workload. It was as if, with the birth of Connor, she had woken up a different person. She had become the one who ate sandwiches at her desk, the one who continued to work while the others competed to see how many biscuits they could get into their mouths.
She picked up sometimes on the conversations – always about the other girls, of course. The annoyance that they didn’t take up the overtime. The moaning about their shift patterns. Not you, of course, they’d say when they caught her listening and remembered that she was a mother too, struggling to raise a child by herself. She still had status from her reputation pre-Connor. She’d been a foot-chaser and an officer who stuck by her colleagues. Then she’d been stabbed by a suspect and her stature had been elevated: she was the female detective who’d risked her own life to save the life of a child. She wanted to hang onto that reputation: fearless, determined, single-minded. An athlete, for fuck’s sake.
She had no photo of Connor on her desk. She’d made it a principle to work every shift that everyone else worked: lates, night duties, weekends. She never said she couldn’t. She stayed to the end and finished every job even though the childcare costs wiped out the overtime. She smiled and kept a positive expression. She knew the rules. No one likes a moaner.
Now she logged onto the crime reporting system.
Her work file was full of updates: tiny dark heartless fonts. This was local volume crime – violence, robbery, drug dealing, fraud. Sometimes they’d throw in a missing person or a sex offence. Sometimes a non-suspicious death that needed a file for the coroner. Lizzie had three new crime reports to read and memos on her seventeen live investigations. The computer fan was whirring loudly as if sharing the panic and resistance that was rising inside her. It made her think of the long-distance runner’s wall, the moment when every footfall makes itself felt, too small, too paltry against the distance ahead. A runner’s T-shirt she had seen: There is no finish line. The words had been intended, she guessed, to hint at the ecstasy of the runner’s high – that moment when you fly instead of running, when you feel invincible. But there was a different take on it – that the pain of the wall would be unending and you’d have no choice but to keep on running.
One of her crimes – a GBH that she’d been handed by the night duty on Saturday morning – showed a suspect had been identified. The borough had a twenty-four-hour arrest policy on named suspects; she’d have to try to get whoever it was nicked and dealt with today. She felt a familiar clutch of anxiety at the usual impossible calculation that had popped instantly into her head. Would she get off in time to pick up Connor from the nursery? Should she ring the childminder now to be safe? But no, best to do the research first. If she cancelled, she’d still have to pay, and that would be money down the drain. She flicked through the update. A local officer had identified the suspect from the CCTV. An identification statement was already in her in-tray and included a comparison between the most recent custody image of the boy and the CCTV still. She looked at the t
wo images: both a young-looking, light-skinned black boy with a line shaved into his left eyebrow. It was a good shout, but by itself, the identification would never be enough.
Arrest, interview, identification procedure … the work rolled out. Lizzie fished the CCTV download from her drawer and went through to the video suite.
She sat at a computer, tapping her biro on the desk while she reviewed the footage. It was the crowd outside a grime gig, hanging out in the fake marble of the local shopping centre. Multiple cameras, colour footage, no audio. CCTV from the council of the street outside, running out of sync with the shopping centre CCTV. Probably four or five hours of footage, which she should study carefully, replaying to find out if she could identify any narrative. But when would she ever have time to do that properly?
She fast-forwarded through the young people doing their thing. The boys standing together. The girls walking past in groups, stopping and talking. Not much happening; everything happening. Lots of surprisingly formal greetings: the boys shaking hands with each other or doing rituals of fist bumps. Everything was cool. A pale-skinned black lad – dark hoody with a Superdry logo across the chest – crossed the atrium towards another and high-fived him. And then, without warning, Superdry punched the other boy in the face.
The victim momentarily lost his footing. Then everything speeded up with no clear sense to it. Like a pack of wild dogs, young men were running across the marble hall and down the escalators two steps at a time. It was a wildlife documentary. The victim was on his feet for only seconds, quickly overwhelmed by a wave of attackers, who swept over him. The boys seemed almost to compete with each other to get close enough to harm him. The body on the floor was hidden now, masked by a throng of urgent kicking that was repetitive, almost mechanical. Then, just as suddenly, it was over. Other boys were pulling the attackers off. The victim was visible again, curled up on the floor, his elbows crooked, both hands still trying to protect his head. The boys were dispersing quickly, pulling up their hoods, checking around them. Someone was helping the victim to his feet and then walking with him towards the exit, supporting him. One of the attackers had knelt down by the escalator and was quickly brushing off his shoes. The victim and his helper were picked up by another camera near the exit: blood down the victim’s face and the front of his hoody.
Back at the escalator, where the attack had happened, the atrium was now a virtually empty space, with only a few young people passing through, approaching each other, stopping in brief huddles of conversation. Uniformed police started to arrive and the remaining youngsters dispersed. The police looked around, transmitted into their radios.
Lizzie checked the identification again, glanced at the custody image of the suspect.
Ryan Kennedy. Fifteen years old.
She replayed the video. Superdry – the boy identified as Ryan Kennedy – had thrown the first punch but had then just walked off as if no longer interested.
The victim hadn’t reported the assault. It was the local Accident and Emergency who had notified police of his identity. He had a facial fracture, a broken collarbone, two fractured ribs. He didn’t know why he’d been attacked. He didn’t know the boy who’d started it.
Lizzie ran the victim’s details through the intelligence systems. Robert Nelson, 04/02/1999 … Sure enough, he was well known to police. A caution for possession of Class A; three arrests for robbery that had not led to charges; two arrests for possession with intent to supply that had been downgraded to simple possession only charges.
Nelson knew well enough who had attacked him. He just didn’t want to involve the police. The boys would be intending to settle whatever the beef was among themselves.
Ash managed to rustle up two unmarked cars. They parked round the corner from the flat and walked, leaving Kirk and Jason at the back in case Ryan made a run for it.
The door was lopsided on its hinges with a cracked frosted pane at the top. The woman who opened it had a wig on sideways and Lizzie imagined the whole house as if at an angle. She had black features but was white-complexioned. Dark acne scars lingered beneath the pale translucence of her skin. She was skinny, too skinny. Grey tracksuit bottoms hung off her bony arse. A strappy T-shirt showed the skin of her upper arms hanging loosely. It was hard to tell her age. She might be thirties, she might be fifty. She nodded at their offered warrant cards with no particular emotion.
‘Ryan, is it?’ she said.
Lizzie nodded. ‘You his mum?’
‘That’s right. Loretta.’
She opened the door to let them enter. Sticky laminate floor. Dark grey dust bunnies resting against the skirting boards. The internal stairs were carpeted with something that had probably once been beige but was now grey, darker at the edges and stained down the threadbare treads.
Lizzie said, ‘You going to be all right to come down to the station with Ryan?’
Loretta nodded and called up, ‘Ryan. Someone for you.’
Ryan appeared at the top of the stairs. He seemed younger than his fifteen years, slight of stature, not tall, not short. Good-looking. Regulation line shaved into his left eyebrow. Brand-new white trainers that looked too big. A black hoody with white trim and white cords. Black jogging pants that hung down showing the waistband of his Guccis. Unusually, the hoody and trainers carried no logo. These boys, usually there was some sort of code that meant you had to wear a particular brand – Adidas or Puma or Nike. The hoody still had the sheen that suggested it hadn’t yet been washed. Lizzie’s heart went out to him, but she didn’t know why. The clothes were too big. Perhaps that was it.
He said, ‘You the feds?’
Ash put on his campest voice. ‘No. We’re from Her Majesty’s Metropolitan Police Service.’
Loretta snorted appreciatively. ‘That’s right.’
Ryan looked between them, assessing, gathering himself together. ‘What you want then, Metropolitan Police Service?’
Lizzie said, ‘Can you come downstairs?’
Lizzie made the arrest. Ryan shrugged and made no comment. She cuffed him to the front, checked the cuffs weren’t too tight. ‘Sorry to do this, but you’re probably a bit quick on your feet.’
‘I’m not gonna run, am I? That would be stupid.’
Ash said, ‘Stupid never stopped anyone trying.’
Lizzie called up Kirk and Jason to help with the search of the flat. Ash patted Ryan down, checking the waistband of his trousers. Ryan bore it stoically. Ash said, ‘I’m looking for—’
‘Anything that might hurt you or me.’
Ash laughed. He squatted down and felt Ryan’s calves. ‘Been through this before?’
But Ryan sounded angry now. ‘I’m hardly going to be carrying indoors.’
‘You never know.’
A check of his pockets produced a fifty-pound note and a handful of coins. Lizzie, holding out an evidence bag for Ash to drop them into, said, ‘You got a paper round then?’
‘Yeah. That’s right.’
Ash ran his fingers under the thick gold chain round Ryan’s neck. ‘How did you afford this?’
‘Present, wasn’t it?’
‘You remember who gave it to you?’
Ryan sucked his teeth. Lizzie held out another evidence bag and Ash unclipped the chain.
Ryan said, ‘Hang on. I can just leave it here.’
Lizzie shook her head. ‘No, I’m seizing it.’
‘It’s mine.’
‘Yeah. You’ll get it back.’
‘You’ve no right to take it.’
‘I have—’
Loretta intervened. ‘No point, Ryan.’
Loretta stood on the walkway, smoking. Kirk and Jason searched the bedrooms. Ash kept an eye on Ryan, who followed Lizzie around while she went through the kitchen and the sitting room. It wasn’t – thank God – one of those places that made your heart sink at the impossibility of searching it. No piles of stuff in the corridors, things falling out of cupboards, clothes stuffed into bin bags piled up to the c
eiling. No, it was the just-as-dismal opposite. Bare cupboards in the kitchen. Empty fridge. The sitting room had a plasma screen and a console facing a stained sofa. A cushion and a filthy crocheted blanket were in a pile on the seat. It was a blanket you wouldn’t give to a dog. Lizzie ran her blue plastic-gloved hands down the creases of the sofa and turned up fluff and a pound coin. Everything she searched was filthy. She could feel the pervasive grit of the place through the gloves.
She looked over her shoulder. ‘This where you sleep, Ryan?’
He nodded.
‘There’s not a room for you upstairs?’
‘My sister’s got that room.’
Kirk put his head round the door. ‘Nothing upstairs.’ He glanced at Ryan. ‘Except you got a lot of trainers and shit. Where’d you get all that from?’
Ryan shrugged. ‘Don’t remember.’
Lizzie said, ‘You found any phones?’
Kirk said, ‘No, why, you not got any either?’
Lizzie shook her head.
7
The cell door shut. Ryan was alone. He’d seen it on his phone before he chucked it. But he couldn’t get his head around it. What he kept thinking was that it just couldn’t be right. It must be a mistake because Spencer couldn’t be dead. No way.
He wanted to shout that out loud – no way, no way – because what the fuck else can you do with that feeling? But he wasn’t s’posed to speak to no one.
Out there he was a soldier keeping it all inside, but in here suddenly he couldn’t see anything. He had to sit, or fall. It was a sensation he couldn’t name, a sort of internal shimmering. Then a flash of those two boys and the jab jab of the knife. He stood up. If he could just stop that! Stop that being real. He paced to the door and back. Sat down again on the blue plastic-coated mattress.
Not dead, no. Not dead. Like he said. No way.