We Can Be Heroes

by Catherine Bruton

  ‘It’s OK, Auntie Karen,’ I say.

  ‘I expect your mothers would fight to see you too,’ she says with a little smile.

  Just then Mik comes running down the alleyway, going in the direction of the park. He pushes past Auntie Karen and ignores me and Priti. He looks angry as hell.

  ‘Oh, boy!’ says Priti. ‘We’re really in trouble now. Come on, let’s get out of here.’

  She grabs my hand and drags me back in to the party. We leave Auntie Karen standing there, staring towards the park where Jed has gone.

  * * *

  Me and Priti sit under one of the tables, watching the entrance to the alleyway from under the long red and gold papery cloth and sipping at a can of cider that Priti’s managed to swipe from Mrs Sanders. It’s warm and I think it tastes pretty disgusting, only I don’t say so.

  It’s ages before Jed reappears – without his dad – and he looks really upset. More upset than I’ve ever seen him in fact. More than the time in the pub, or when Auntie Karen was screaming outside Granny’s house, or even when we went to see Granny Brenda.

  Priti sticks her head out from under the table and whistles through her fingers. Jed clambers under the table then pulls the cloth right down like he doesn’t want to be found and sits hunched up and shivering (although it’s not even cold). When we ask him what’s up, he says, ‘Nothing!’

  ‘Doesn’t seem like nothing,’ says Priti. ‘What happened?’

  ‘Nothing’s happened,’ says Jed.

  ‘Fine,’ says Priti. ‘You don’t have to tell us if you don’t want to.’

  ‘There’s nothing to tell.’

  ‘If you say so.’

  We all take turns to swig on the cider and I start to feel sick. Jed stares at the alleyway, but Mik doesn’t reappear and neither does Uncle Ian or Zara. Priti reckons Mik and Zara might have got back into the house over the garden fence. ‘Unless Mik caught Romeo and Juliet in the act, in which case – hasta la vista, Zara,’ she says, grinning.

  ‘My dad had to go home,’ Jed says after a bit.

  ‘Why didn’t you say so?’ asks Priti.

  The mood of the party has changed and the Asian music has been replaced by English pop music. Some of the younger people are dancing while the older guests start to make their way home. Zara reappears from the house and starts dancing with a group of other Asian girls. She’s got really bright lipstick and a new sari on – green and gold this time – and she has a big grin on her face like nothing is the matter, but she’s wearing sunglasses, even though it’s not sunny any more. And there’s still no sign of Mik.

  I don’t know what time it is that people start clearing up. I suppose it must be quite late because it’s starting to get dark. We crawl out from our cider den. (I feel all dizzy and sick and the sky looks really bright somehow, although it’s nearly night.) And then I hear Stevie’s mum calling for her.

  Mrs Sanders does that thing at first that always makes my granny tut and get cross when she hears women do it in the supermarket. She starts to scream at Stevie to stop messing around – ‘You little madam, where the bloody hell are you!’ and, ‘You get back here now or I’ll give you one!’ – that sort of thing. I can see Granny blanching because she hates hearing adults yelling like that at children.

  But after a while Mrs Sanders starts saying, ‘Where the hell is she?’ and then, ‘Has anyone seen my daughter?’ and she starts sounding really worried and soon people are looking everywhere for Stevie – and no one can find her.

  ‘She’s probably fallen asleep somewhere,’ says Granny and then someone suggests that she might have climbed into a car or garage and got trapped there, so we check all those places. And all the time it’s getting darker and Stevie is nowhere to be found.

  Someone asks the three of us if we know where she could be. I say that she was in the park earlier, but Priti glares at me and says we haven’t seen her and Jed doesn’t say anything. So some men, including Grandad and Stevie’s dad, go and check out the park and Grandad comes back moaning about smashed beer bottles and more graffiti, but says there’s no sign of Stevie.

  Granny is comforting Stevie’s mum, who’s crying big fat tears (they must taste of cider, I reckon) and even Stevie’s dad, who’s a big man, looks smaller and not so drunk any more and no one knows where else to look.

  Then someone suggests calling the police (which makes Stevie’s mum cry even more) and Granny tells me and Jed to go inside. She doesn’t want anything happening to us, she says.

  Suddenly I realise that something might have happened to Stevie. Up till now I’d thought she was just hiding somewhere and had fallen asleep or got lost and she’d be found snoozing on a neighbour’s sofa or something. I was too busy thinking about Zara and Mik and Tyreese, and what happened with Jed’s mum and dad, so the idea that Stevie might be in some kind of danger hadn’t crossed my mind. I think it had crossed Jed’s though because he seems even more worried and upset than before.

  Me and Jed go inside, but we keep watching from our window as the grown-ups keep looking in all the places they’ve already checked. And then the police turn up. Across the road we can see Priti and Zara watching from their window. Zara looks loads younger with her hair down and wearing her pyjamas. We wave and they wave back – even Zara. And it’s hard to tell because of the light, but I could swear she’s got a black eye.

  Then Granny comes in and tells us to get into bed and I guess we fall asleep at some point because all night long I dream of Lil’ Priti and Jed-eye and Ben-D trying to find a little girl who’s gone missing. Only in my dream it’s Blythe, not Stevie, who can’t be found, and at some point she turns into my mum and I’m looking all over for her, but I can’t find her anywhere.

  I wake up in the middle of the night with a hangover (or at least I think it’s a hangover because my head hurts a lot and I feel sick). When I look outside, the police car is still there, so I know Stevie is still missing.

  AUGUST 11TH

  It’s a weird thing when a kid goes missing because everyone suddenly starts acting differently. All the neighbours are pretending to be friends with Stevie’s mum and dad, even though Granny says they’ve been moaning about the state of their front garden and their gaudy Christmas lights for years. And first thing in the morning they come out of their houses, in their slippers and their dressing gowns, and they talk to each other in low voices in the middle of the street – neighbours who’ve barely said hello to each other for years, Grandad says – suddenly all matey with each other.

  The other thing I notice is that everyone is looking at their watches all the time. Jed says this is because cases like this are time critical.

  But other than the police car permanently parked outside Stevie’s house, and the fact that neighbours in their slippers are talking to each other over the privet hedges, you’d never know anything had happened here yesterday. Grandad said that the cul-de-sac would be covered in litter and all the flower beds trampled after the party, but actually everything’s been tidied up just like new, so I’m guessing the Muhammeds were up late last night clearing things away. ‘So much for Shakeel’s wedding night,’ says Jed, earning him a look from Granny.

  This morning, Mr Muhammed is out with a can of paint going over the new graffiti which has been painted along the fence down the alleyway, and we hear him telling old Mrs Underwood from No. 21 that his sons cleared the park of broken glass to make it safe for the kiddies.

  We don’t go over to Priti’s. Granny says me and Jed aren’t allowed out – just in case we go missing too, like there’s suddenly a black hole or Bermuda Triangle in the cul-de-sac. So Jed and I hang around the house. I draw cartoons while Jed comes up with theories on Stevie’s disappearance.

  ‘Perhaps she’s been abducted by aliens or transported back through a time vortex to another millennium,’ says Jed.

  I draw a spaceship hovering over the cul-de-sac, Stevie Sanders being beamed up on her pink bike with the tassels on the handlebars.

>   Granny says he’s been watching too much Dr Who. Then she sighs and says that Stevie’s mum and dad would probably welcome the appearance of a tardis with Stevie in it right now.

  I draw a picture of Stee-V (I figured Stevie can be in the Bomb-busters strips too) being kidnapped by little green men while Jed-eye and Ben-D attack the spaceship with swords. Lil’ Priti just stands by, eating a toffee apple.

  About ten o’clock in the morning another police car arrives. Two officers get out and go round to all the houses in the cul-de-sac.

  ‘Will they come here?’ Jed asks.

  ‘I should think they’ll want to talk to everyone,’ says Granny.

  ‘Right,’ says Jed, and he stops going on about UFOs and time travel after that.

  Eventually, they come to our house – a policeman and a young policewoman with a ponytail, who Grandad says doesn’t look old enough to be out of school. Granny makes them a cup of tea and then they talk to Granny and Grandad first in the sitting room while me and Jed wait outside in the hallway. Although he keeps making jokes, Jed’s in another of his weird moods.

  ‘Do you reckon they’ll talk to your dad too?’ I ask.

  ‘Why would they want to do that?’ he snaps.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘I just wondered.’

  ‘He doesn’t know anything, just like we don’t,’ says Jed, staring down at his shoe and kicking it against the banister.

  ‘But we were nearly the last people to see her,’ I say.

  ‘No, we weren’t,’ he says quickly.

  ‘How do you figure that then?’

  ‘What about the bikers and Zara and Mik? They all saw her. They’re just not saying so, that’s all.’

  ‘So was she still there when you went back to the park?’

  No answer.

  ‘What about your dad? Did he see her?’

  But I don’t get to hear his answer because just then the policewoman comes out and says she wants to talk to us.

  So me and Jed have to sit on the sofa side by side while the policewoman sits on the pouffe in front of us. It’s too low, so her knees are nearly up to her chin as she asks us questions in a soft nursery-rhyme voice, as if we’re about three years old. The other officer stands by the window, pretending to look out, but I know he’s listening to everything we’re saying: the old bad cop, good cop routine.

  When did we last see Stevie? lady cop asks.

  ‘In the park,’ I reply.

  ‘What time was that?’

  ‘Not sure. Before it got dark,’ I say.

  ‘Who else was there?’

  ‘The bikers,’ I say. For some reason Jed is letting me do all the talking.

  I glance at Granny and Grandad, who are standing in front of the fireplace, next to the picture of my dad and Uncle Ian, watching us anxiously.

  ‘Do you know their names?’

  ‘No,’ I say, although this is a lie because I know Tyreese’s name. I’m not sure why I don’t tell her.

  ‘How many of them were there?’

  ‘Four maybe.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ The policewoman looks up from her notepad. ‘It’s just that some other people said they saw five men on bikes ride into the cul-de-sac.’

  ‘There were only four,’ I say.

  She notes it down. ‘Anyone else?’

  I suddenly wish I’d spoken to Priti about what to say. I shake my head which feels like less of a lie than actually saying ‘No.’

  ‘Did you see anyone else going in the direction of the park after you left?’

  ‘Mik,’ I say and it occurs to me that I haven’t seen Mik at all since then.

  ‘Mikaeel Muhammed?’

  I nod.

  ‘Do you know why he was going to the park?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Could you tell what sort of mood he seemed to be in?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Anyone else?’

  I turn to Jed, but he doesn’t say anything, just stares at his feet. It’s like we’ve switched identities – today he’s the mute and I’m the big mouth.

  ‘Ben,’ says the policewoman. ‘Did you see anyone else going into the park after you left?’

  I pause then say quietly, ‘I think Jed and Uncle Ian might have gone back for a bit.’

  ‘No, we didn’t!’ Jed’s head shoots up as if he’s suddenly woken up.

  ‘You ran off after we saw . . .’ I stop, remembering that Granny and Grandad don’t know about Jed’s mum.

  ‘I didn’t go to the park, stupid!’ Jed’s staring at me and his face is red with anger.

  ‘OK, you didn’t then,’ I say.

  ‘Where did you and your dad go then, Jed?’ the policewoman asks.

  ‘Just . . . about.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Does it matter? We didn’t go to the park, OK.’

  ‘OK,’ says the policewoman, glancing at the policeman standing by the window who hasn’t said anything up to this point.

  ‘Several people told us that when they were searching for Stevie in the park last night, it looked like a fight had gone on and other people say they heard shouting – but this morning, the place has been cleaned up.’ The policeman stares at me and Jed. ‘Did either of you hear or see a fight?’

  ‘No,’ I say.

  ‘No!’ Jed repeats it a fraction of a second after I do.

  ‘And did either of you see anyone hanging around, acting suspiciously, perhaps someone who hadn’t been invited to the party? Did anyone approach you maybe, try to talk to you?’

  This time Jed and I both say ‘No’ at exactly the same time.

  The police officers go after that, although I hear them say to Granny, ‘We’ll need contact details for the boy’s father. We want to talk to him too.’

  ‘Of course,’ says Granny.

  ‘I’m afraid he was rather drunk,’ we hear Granny say as she ushers them out into the hall. ‘He misses the routine of army life, you know?’

  I turn to Jed and whisper, ‘Why didn’t you tell them that you went back to the park?’

  ‘Because I didn’t,’ says Jed.

  I’m not sure if he means he didn’t go back to the park or just that he didn’t tell them. But he looks so angry I know there’s no point in asking him again, so I drop it.

  At lunchtime we hear them talking on the radio about the ‘disappearance of local girl, Stevie Sanders’. Then a bit later, a van pulls up outside and some people with big cameras and microphones and stuff get out.

  ‘Here comes the media circus,’ says Grandad, who seems to be enjoying this. He hasn’t even bothered to switch on the TV this morning – he told Granny that the soap opera unfolding outside is far more interesting.

  ‘I expect they’ll do one of those TV appeals,’ says Grandad. ‘I wonder if the Sanders know that the police psychologists study the footage to see if any of the family members did it.’

  ‘Did what?’ I ask.

  ‘Nothing,’ says Granny, glaring at Grandad.

  ‘He means killed her,’ says Jed, who’s hardly looked at me since the police left.

  ‘I’m sure nobody has killed Stevie,’ says Granny quickly. ‘Soon enough the police will find her safe and well.’

  ‘So long as she’s not dead,’ says Jed.

  Grandad was right. Stevie’s mum and dad are on the news tonight. They’re sitting in their lounge, holding a picture of Stevie which must have been taken quite recently as she’s brown as a nut. Stevie’s mum cries quite a lot and doesn’t say much. Her dad says, ‘If anyone knows anything that can help us find our angel, please, please contact the police.’

  ‘We just want you back, baby girl!’ says her mum at the end.

  Then her dad says, ‘Wherever you are, if you’re watching this, Stevie, we love you.’

  ‘What do you reckon?’ says Grandad, flicking the switch to mute after it’s finished so we can just see the silent, crying face of Mrs Sanders. ‘Guilty?’

  ‘Don’t put ideas in the boys’ h
eads, please,’ says Granny.

  ‘Think about it, Rita,’ says Grandad. ‘If we’re living next to a child-killer, where will he turn next?’

  ‘Darling, please!’ She only ever calls him darling when she’s really mad.

  ‘After everything that’s happened to this family, we don’t need any more tragedy,’ Grandad says.

  On the TV they’ve gone live to a reporter who’s standing outside Stevie’s house. Me and Jed jump up to look out of the window and, sure enough, there he is, standing on the driveway, just like he is on the TV.

  ‘Turn the sound back on, Grandad,’ says Jed.

  Grandad flicks the remote. ‘In cases like this the first forty-eight hours are crucial, so police are redoubling their efforts,’ we hear the reporter saying. It’s weird watching him through the window and hearing his voice come out of the TV at the same time.

  ‘It really is live,’ says Jed. ‘Watch his lips – you can tell.’

  We both watch. There’s a very slight delay as the reporter’s lips aren’t quite synched with the voice-over. ‘Tomorrow, local volunteers will comb the park area where Stevie was last seen.’

  ‘Are you going to volunteer?’ Jed asks Granny and Grandad.

  ‘We probably should, Barry,’ says Granny.

  Grandad just nods and I don’t know if that’s a yes or a no.

  ‘Do you reckon we should tell the reporter about Shakeel’s bomb?’ whispers Jed. We’re both still watching the reporter who has stopped filming and is drinking coffee from a flask.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It might be connected, you know.’

  ‘I don’t think we should tell them anything until we’re completely sure,’ I say, nervously glancing round to make sure Granny and Grandad can’t hear what we’re saying.

  ‘I suppose so,’ says Jed. ‘We don’t want to jeopardise the investigation. And it might all be linked.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Stevie’s disappearance and the bomb plot.’

  ‘Really?’ I say dubiously.

  ‘I bet you it is,’ says Jed. ‘You just wait and see.’