The Wrong Boy

by Willy Russell

  ‘Well, I can sympathise with that,’ my Mam said. ‘I work on the checkout in KwikSave.’

  ‘Hey,’ he said, all chummy like him and my Mam had been best mates for ages, ‘count yourself lucky. Compared to a job like mine, a checkout seems like paradise.’

  ‘Oh aye,’ my Mam said, laughing as she did, ‘all the glamour of baked beans and bar codes!’

  He chuckled at that, the detective. ‘Well, thanks for your time, Mrs Marks,’ he said. ‘If everybody was as helpful and straightforward as you, perhaps this wouldn’t be quite the tedious job it is.’

  He spoke to the other policemen then and told them, ‘Come on, you two, let’s be having you.’

  I saw them getting up off the settee and so I crept back up the stairs quick then and crouched down on the landing, so they wouldn’t see me when they came into the hall. And I was dead happy that it had all turned out to be about nothing in the end. I knew I hadn’t done anything wrong. But when you’ve got three policemen at the door, you start to think you might have done something wrong without even knowing about it. But it was all right because they were leaving now, coming out the front room and into the hall and the detective telling the two policemen, ‘I’m sure Mrs Marks has got enough to do without us wasting her time any further.’

  My Mam laughed as she followed them towards the front door and she said, ‘I have as a matter of fact. With being out all day today I haven’t even put the washing machine on yet.’

  ‘That’s what I mean,’ I heard the detective say, ‘it’s not all roses, is it, having to work and bring up a young lad at the same time. And they’re not easy, are they, kids?’

  ‘You can say that again!’ my Mam laughed. And from where I was on the landing, I could just see them through the stair rails now, as my Mam reached forward and opened the front door for them.

  Everything was all right. They’d be gone in a minute and I’d be in bed and my Mam’d be up to see me and say goodnight and remind me not to read for too long because it’s not good for your eyes, reading under electric light for too long. I was just deciding which one of my books I was going to read or whether to read my comics when I heard him, the detective sergeant.

  ‘Mind you,’ he was saying to my Mam, ‘you’ll have made it up now, I expect.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’ my Mam said. ‘Come again?’

  ‘The row,’ he said, ‘or perhaps I misheard you. I thought you said you’d had a row, you and your son; you weren’t speaking or something.’

  ‘Oh that,’ my Mam laughed. ‘Yeah, we’ve more than made it up,’ she said.

  ‘Ah well, that’s good to hear,’ he said. ‘Kids, eh! They’ll bloody row about anything these days, won’t they? The trouble they cause.’

  ‘Oh, it was nothing like that,’ my Mam said. ‘I couldn’t describe it as “causing trouble”. In fact it was me,’ she said, ‘I’d got all upset after because of some sort of, I don’t know, just some sort of kids’ mucky stuff that he’d come out with. And then, well, you get worried about them, don’t y’? And I ended up taking him to see the doctor.’

  ‘The psychotherapist?’ he said.

  ‘Yeah. But it was ridiculous,’ my Mam said. ‘I was just overreacting.’

  ‘Oh I don’t know,’ he said, the detective man, still sounding like he was all chummy and dead sympathetic, ‘I think you’d have a right to be upset. A lad as young as Raymond, coming out with mucky things to his mother.’

  ‘Oh it wasn’t to me,’ my Mam said. ‘He didn’t say it to me. It was something he’d said to his little cousin, Sonia.’

  My Mam didn’t see it, but I did. The glance. The detective sergeant glancing at the two ordinary policemen. Then, still sounding like he was being all sympathetic to my Mam, he said to her, ‘A bit near the knuckle was it, what he said to the little girl?’

  ‘No, not really,’ my Mam said. ‘I was upset at the time because my brother was here and he’d make a meal out of anything, him. But it was just a bit of smut, really. The sort of thing that kids get up to all the time, Janice said. She agreed, Dr Janice, y’ know, at the hospital.’

  He nodded. ‘Some people,’ he said, ‘they get upset a bit too easily, don’t they?’

  ‘Well, to tell y’ the truth,’ my Mam said, ‘our Jason, my brother, I think he’s always been a bit jealous. Y’ see, their little Sonia’s not got a lot upstairs really, God love her. And our Raymond’s got such an imagination. Dr Janice agreed. And I just think Sonia and our Raymond, they’re not a very good combination. Raymond might just have been telling her a joke for all I know.’

  He laughed then, the detective policeman. He chuckled and he said, ‘Well, come on, put us out of our misery; we need a laugh now and then, doing a job like this; you’re not going to send us away into the night without letting us in on what he said, are y’?’ He chuckled again and said, ‘Go on, you won’t make us blush!’

  My Mam even started laughing then. And she said, ‘Well, it was a bit funny, looking back on it. If you’d seen the face on our Sonia when she came in here and announced that Princess Leia was dead. You see, he’d told her, Raymond, he’d said that Princess Leia, y’ know from Star Wars, he’d told Sonia that the Princess had had to be killed because she was really a prostitute and she’d been doing it, y’ know, with all the Stormtroopers.’

  I could see the faces of the policemen, especially the detective sergeant. And nobody was laughing at all. My Mam tried to. But it just tailed off as she realised she was laughing all alone. She just sort of shrugged then and said, ‘Well!’

  ‘And how old would she be?’ the detective sergeant said. ‘The little girl he was telling this kind of thing to, what age is she?’

  My Mam sort of looked a bit like she didn’t know what to do with herself. ‘Seven,’ she said.

  ‘And Raymond’s … eleven,’ he said. And he left that kind of hanging in the air as if it was important and my Mam just stood there, waiting for them to leave. The front door was still open. But now they were making no effort to go.

  The detective man was frowning and he said, ‘Is it something that happens on a regular basis, this “smutty” behaviour of his?’

  ‘Of course not,’ my Mam said, ‘what are y’ sayin’? That he does that sort of thing all the time? Well, you’re wrong because to my knowledge that’s the first time he’s ever done anything like that. ’

  ‘Is that right?’ the detective sergeant said. He frowned at my Mam as he said, ‘You’re trying to tell me that you take your son to see a psychotherapist just because of one isolated incident. Come on, Mrs Marks,’ he said. ‘That wasn’t the first time he’d done something like that, was it?’

  ‘I’ve told y’,’ my Mam said, ‘he’s never done anything like that before!’

  She was looking at him like she was scandalised, my Mam. And she said, ‘Anyway. I thought you’d asked all the questions you needed to ask and I’ve got to put the washing on, so if you wouldn’t mind.’

  My Mam stepped forward and held the door open. But the detective didn’t move. He said, ‘You’ve got a short memory, haven’t y’, Mrs Marks. If your son’s never done anything like that before, then how come when he was at Binfield Junior School he was suspended for luring a whole load of other young boys into an act of gross indecency?’

  My Mam stared at him, looking all shocked and appalled, her hand going up to her mouth without her even knowing it.

  ‘Is this what … Is this what … all this is about?’ she said. ‘It wasn’t gross … inde … It wasn’t anything like that, Janice said, Dr Janice! Talk to Dr Janice at the hospital, she’ll tell y’!’

  ‘I don’t need to talk to doctor anybody,’ he said, ‘I’ve talked to enough people as it is. Like I’ve talked to his former head teacher, Mrs Marks. And I’ve talked to other parents in this community. I’ve spent most of the day talking to a great many people, Mrs Marks. I know everything that went on down at that canal.’

  ‘Look!’ my Mam said, and she was almost shou
ting now. ‘It was a bit of muckiness, that’s all!’ She shook her head like she couldn’t believe what was happening. ‘A bit of muckiness!’ she said, her arms outstretched like she was appealing to him. But he just stood there staring at my Mam. ‘And I’ll tell you something,’ she said, ‘we’ve already paid the price and all. We’ve suffered enough as it is, all because of a bit of muckiness! That headmaster!’ she said. ‘That bastard, can’t he leave us alone? What’s he doing bringing in the bloody police over something like that? Something that’s been done and dealt with and finished.’

  The detective sergeant slowly shook his head. ‘We’re not here at the headmaster’s bidding,’ he said. ‘We only talked to the headmaster as part of our general enquiries. We’re not here because of him.’ He paused then, before he said, ‘The reason I’m here tonight, Mrs Marks, is because of that little girl.’

  My Mam frowned as she asked, ‘What little girl?’

  He snorted a disbelieving laugh, telling my Mam, ‘The little girl who was abducted!’

  I could see my Mam staring and then her eyes suddenly growing wide with horror as something dawned upon her. ‘Oh my God!’ my Mam said, and she slumped against the side of the stairs. ‘Our Sonia,’ she said, ‘is this about our Sonia?’

  He shook his head. ‘No,’ he said, ‘her name’s not Sonia. It’s Paulette as a matter of fact, Paulette Patterson. But she’s barely older than your little niece, Mrs Marks. Somebody lured her into a disused warehouse. And when they’d finished with her, they left her there, trapped in the cellars. Eighteen hours she was there. And when we found her, she was in a terrible state, cut, bruised, scratched, various articles of clothing missing. We hardly needed the doctor’s report to confirm it. But it did, of course, the examination. You see, before she’d been left trapped in that cellar, somebody had been … “at her”, Mrs Marks.’

  My Mam leaned there against the side of the stairs, staring at the sergeant and shaking her head in appalled sympathy at the plight of such a girl.

  ‘And, you see, the thing is,’ he said, ‘that disused warehouse where we found Paulette, that warehouse, Mrs Marks, happens to be alongside the canal. Not more than fifty yards from where your son liked to take his little friends. Fifty yards from where these two officers found him floating in the canal last night.’

  It all went silent. I didn’t understand! I was up there on the landing, watching my Mam like I was watching in slow motion as her face creased up and her mouth fell open and her eyes burned up with horror. I just couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe what was happening. And my Mam couldn’t believe it either. When the sound came out of her, it was like the wailing of a wounded animal.

  ‘Raymond?’ she said. ‘You think Raymond could have something to do with a thing like that? He’s just a young lad!’ she said, her voice getting higher with every wail. ‘He’s just a child himself!’ My Mam pushed herself away from the side of the stairs and moved back from the detective and the police officers. Her face had become a distorted mask of horror. ‘Just a young lad,’ she whimpered, ‘a child.’

  The detective shook his head at my Mam. ‘There’s no such thing as children these days. Not any more.’

  My Mam stared at him in disgust. And then she suddenly pointed to the door. ‘Get out!’ she said. ‘All of y’, get out of my house now!’

  But they didn’t get out! The despicable detective just walked towards my Mam and she backed away from him until she was up against the door that leads to the kitchen.

  ‘Now you listen, love,’ he said, ‘you listen to me. It’s a mother’s instinct to protect her son. I understand that. But you know as well as me, love; you know what he did to his little friends, down at the canal. You’ve been worried about him yourself, haven’t you, Mrs Marks? That’s why you took him to see that psychiatrist, didn’t you? Because a mother knows about these things, doesn’t she, Mrs Marks? A mother knows her own son better than anybody. You’ve already told me the sort of imagination he’s got, the sort of imagination that takes delight in telling little seven-year-old girls about prostitution and things that little seven-year-old girls shouldn’t have to listen to.’

  My Mam was stood there and I could see that she was refusing to listen, that she was just staring straight ahead and trying not to hear whatever it was he was saying.

  ‘And I think you also know’, he said, ‘that he wasn’t sat out in that yard for an hour or more. So you ask yourself, love; if he wasn’t out in that yard, then where was he for that hour? Where was he? And what was he doing?’

  That’s when this cry just came out of me. And I didn’t even know where it came from, I didn’t even know it was me. I just heard this terrified, half-strangled sort of voice as it cried out, ‘I was in the yard. I was in the yard.’

  And I heard my Mam belting up the stairs and saw her rush across the landing and get hold of me and pull me to her, her voice all wailing and crying like mine as she said, ‘I know you were, son. I know you were! I know. I know you’d never … I know you couldn’t … What are they saying, Raymond?’ she said. ‘What are they saying?’

  He appeared. At the top of our stairs. He stood there watching me and my Mam as we huddled together in the dark at the back of the landing.

  ‘What we’re saying, Raymond,’ he said, ‘is that if you love your mum, and I think you do, then the best thing you could do is just tell us what you did to little Paulette. I know that you felt guilty about it afterwards, didn’t you, Raymond; because you threw yourself into the canal, didn’t you? You tried to do away with yourself, didn’t you, Raymond?’

  ‘Come on, come on!’ my Mam said, and suddenly she was leading me along the landing. ‘Don’t listen,’ she said, ‘take no notice. Come on, just come with me, son, just come with me.’

  She pushed past the despicable detective and started leading me down the stairs, ‘Don’t say anything,’ she said. ‘Just come with me.’

  ‘And where do you think you’re going to, Mrs Marks?’ I heard him calling from the top of the stairs.

  But my Mam wouldn’t answer him and when we got to the bottom of the stairs she grabbed her coat and mine from off the banister. ‘Come on,’ she said to me, ‘put this on.’

  She started getting me into my coat. And I heard one of the ordinary policemen saying, ‘What are y’ doing, love? Where d’ y’ think you’re going?’

  ‘Don’t worry, son,’ she said, ignoring the policemen. ‘They can’t stop us, they can’t.’

  He was coming back down the stairs then, the detective, and he said, ‘You can’t run away from it, love. You think you’re helping him? The best thing you could do, love, is face the truth and get him to admit it now. He’d be given help, proper help, not quack psychiatrists.’

  ‘Come on,’ my Mam said. And we left the house, left it with the policemen still in it. But my Mam didn’t seem to care. She just kept telling me, ‘Come on, quick, come on,’ as she hurried up the street like a mad dervish woman, walking so fast that I had to run to keep up with her. And when we got to the main road she nearly got knocked over, rushing out into the road and waving at a taxi, standing right in front of it so the brakes were all screaming and squealing as it shuddered to a stop just before my Mam. The driver shouted something about my Mam being a mental woman but she ignored him and just pulled the door open and told him to take us to the hospital.

  He said something nasty and sarcastic about it should be the effing mental hospital.

  ‘Why?’ I asked my Mam. ‘Why are we going to the hospital?’

  My Mam took hold of my hand, squeezing it dead tight.

  ‘It’s all right,’ she said, ‘it’ll be all right. We’re gonna see Janice. We’re going to see Dr Janice and it’ll be all right. It’ll be all right then, it will, it will!’ she said.

  Then she just sat there, my Mam, staring straight in front of her. And nodding her head all the time like a little sparrow bird. And sometimes muttering under her breath, ‘It’ll be all right, it will … I
t’ll be all right.’

  Her voice sounded all desperate and she was clutching hold of my hand so hard I thought my fingers might break. I didn’t try and take my hand away though. Because even though it was hurting, I was glad that my Mam was holding on to me. Because the only thing that seemed to be real any more was my Mam. And everything else was mixed up and stupid and mad like a senseless nightmare. But as long as I had my Mam, and my Mam believed me and knew that I hadn’t done anything bad to the little girl, then it didn’t matter, the rest of it. Because it was all stupid and it must be some mistake because I was only a boy. So how could I have done something which bad men do to little girls? And as long as my Mam believed me, as long as she was clutching hold of my hand and telling me it’d be all right, then I knew it would be all right. It didn’t matter what he’d said, that disgusting detective man. I didn’t care what any detective said about me because as long as I was with my Mam and my Mam believed me and knew that I hadn’t done anything to the little girl, then nothing else mattered. I knew that my Mam had been dead brave the way she’d walked past those policemen, the way she’d just walked out of the house and left everything. And now she was sorting it all out, going back to the hospital and telling Dr Janice. And I knew that that was the right thing to do because Dr Janice understood. She knew that I hadn’t done any of those things that the detective said I’d done, like ‘doing things’ to my ‘little friends’ or trying to kill myself or ‘taking delight’ in telling dirty things to my little cousin. And because she was a doctor, Dr Janice would be able to tell the police and they’d have to listen to her and they’d know then that I was just a boy; the sort of boy who could never have done the sort of thing that bad men do to little girls.

  But Dr Janice wasn’t there. And it was like my Mam didn’t seem to understand at first.

  ‘She’s got to be here,’ my Mam said.

  I could see that the Sister was starting to get fed up. ‘She’s not here!’ she said.

  My Mam frowned. ‘I’ll have to come back tomorrow then?’