The Unquiet Grave

by Steven Dunne

  ‘Of all the bloody nerve,’ muttered an aggrieved McCleary, sitting back down to take a noisy swig of tea. ‘Kids these days don’t know they’re born. No wonder that whore of a mother didn’t take you with her.’

  ‘She’s not a whore!’ screamed Brendan, jumping to stand square on to his father.

  McCleary slammed his chair back with unexpected vigour, sloshing some of his tea on the table. He made no further move, instead raising an arm, his hand stiff and straight. ‘Talk back to me again and there’s more where that came from, my lad,’ he shouted, glancing at the back of his hand.

  Brendan glared with hate-filled eyes but said nothing, his chest heaving as he tried to control his rage.

  ‘Didn’t think so.’ McCleary sat down again, a sneer contorting the stubble on his sagging, wrinkled face. He pulled open a drawer of the table and took out a half bottle of Navy rum. Removing the cork, he poured a large measure into his tea without taking his amused eyes from his son glaring back at him. ‘That’s right,’ he said quietly. ‘You keep thinking it, son. One day your old man will be too old and you’ll be too big and then. . .’ his laugh was more of a snarl. ‘That day’s a long way off, you little guttersnipe, and don’t you forget it while you’re under my roof.’

  ‘Not as far off as you think,’ mumbled Brendan.

  ‘What you say?’

  ‘I said it’s not your roof unless you pay the rent.’

  ‘And that’s my fault, is it? The Social can’t get their bleeding act together and I’m to blame.’ McCleary sneered again with unconcealed violence but then his expression softened into pleasure and he sought the right words. ‘You see that ripe little virgin last night then?’

  ‘Don’t talk about her,’ muttered Brendan.

  ‘Who? That stuck-up Stanforth girl with the juicy little knockers?’ McCleary chuckled.

  ‘I said don’t talk about her.’

  ‘When you bringing her round here to meet your old man?’ leered McCleary.

  ‘Never. I threw her over, see.’

  ‘You mean she ditched you ’cos you didn’t know what to do with it.’ McCleary grinned, and finally managed to ignite his patchwork cigarette. ‘Shame. I could have taught you a thing or two about how to handle those cock-teasing little whores. Maybe even break her in for you, you ask nicely.’ He stuck out his tongue at an invisible ice cream and laughed as Brendan jumped from the couch and ran to grip the other side of the table, his knuckles white with the effort, face red with anger.

  ‘You disgusting old bastard,’ he screamed. ‘Teach me something? You couldn’t break wind without sleeping it off for half a day, never mind telling me what to do with a bird.’ He thrust a finger in McCleary’s face. ‘And that’s why Mum left.’

  ‘You bleeding little. . .’

  McCleary made a grab for his son, but Brendan yanked his arm out of reach and headed for the front door, pulling his coat from a chair as he opened it.

  ‘One day I’ll do for you, old man,’ he screamed then jumped back in shock at the burly figure filling the doorway.

  ‘Going somewhere, Brendan?’ inquired a smiling DC Laird.

  Four

  31 October 2011 – Normanton, a suburb of Derby

  The two lightly built hooded figures pelted along the wet pavements for all they were worth, a free hand holding up their tracksuit bottoms, usually slung halfway down their hips. After rounding a bend, they slithered to a halt behind a privet hedge, and crouched down out of sight of imagined pursuers. Both boys flipped back their hoods and dropped their hands to their knees to suck in much needed oxygen.

  Scott Wheeler grinned from ear to ear, looking up at his friend, Joshua Stapleton, for approval. ‘Well sick, bruv.’ His grin tempered when he saw doubt on his friend’s face. He managed to pant another inquiry. ‘S’up, bruv?’

  ‘What’s up,’ panted Josh in return, ‘is people could get hurt.’

  ‘Naw,’ scoffed Scott. ‘It’s just a bit of fun. Anyway, what do we care? It’s not like we know ’em. They can die, far as I’m concerned,’ he continued, hardening his heart to emotions that would weaken him. ‘Shit, Josh. We’re under age, I told you. We can do what we want. Remember Boffo, from my brother’s crew? He reckons Five-0 can’t touch us ’cos we’re too young to know what we’re doing. All they can do is tell us off and let us go.’

  ‘Is that why we’re wild? Proving you a G so you can hook up with Cal’s crew?’ said Josh. ‘DBI, bruv.’

  ‘Don’t beg it?’ said Scott, affronted. ‘What you chattin’?’

  ‘You said it, Scoot,’ panted Josh. ‘We’re just kids. Don’t try too hard. Let it come to you. Ain’t no good to your bro’s crew, ’cept they want someone to hold for ’em.’

  ‘What’s wrong with that?’ argued Scott. ‘That’s how you start. The Gs can’t hold ’cos they’re too old. That’s what gets us in.’

  ‘Mug’s game,’ said Josh. ‘All you get is a rap sheet and your ass RO-ed for a year.’

  ‘They can stick their referral orders up their fucking arses,’ spat Scott. ‘When you got a crew that’s got your back, that’s respeck, man. Proper respeck.’

  ‘You mean people we know shit bricks when they see us,’ retorted Josh. ‘That’s called fear, bruv.’

  ‘Bring it on, yo,’ drawled Scott, throwing his arms in front of him like his best rapper, 50 Cent, two imaginary guns held across his chest.

  ‘Yeah, great, but what if someone saw us tricking that guy up?’ said Josh, nodding back down the street. ‘And he died.’

  ‘So what?’ snarled Scott. ‘Din’t you hear me? We get a free pass.’ He shrugged. ‘Sides, any stiff who clocks us gets a visit from our fam. They soon forget they seen us, you hear what I’m sayin’.’

  ‘I hear,’ replied Josh, looking no happier. He glanced up at the steady drizzle falling from the gunmetal sky. ‘Look, Scoot. It’s freezing. . .’

  ‘I fucking knew it,’ howled Scott. ‘Yer bailing on me.’

  ‘Quit dekin’ me out.’

  ‘It’s trick or treat, man,’ wailed Scott.

  ‘Yeah, it is,’ agreed Josh. ‘And you know what? We’re only supposed to kick over bins and bang on windows. Give ’em a scare, is all.’

  ‘A scare? What you chattin’, pussy?’ snarled Scott. ‘These fuckers get plenty of warning. If you don’t get us no sweets, there’s rules. Everyone knows. No treat means a trick, right?’

  ‘There’s a limit.’

  ‘A limit?’ snarled Scott. ‘Why you talking gay? No limits, remember. Like Cal.’

  ‘Cal’s in Juvey for two years,’ pointed out Josh.

  ‘So what? He’s a big man. He got his rep an’ he gets respeck.’

  Josh smiled. ‘Which big man you know gets told when to take a piss and hit the sack?’

  Scott’s expression darkened. ‘Well, no one tells me what I can and can’t do,’ he shouted. ‘Anyone gets up in my grille, got a serious beef comin’. That’s what No Limits means or have you blanked it?’

  Josh glanced briefly at Scott. No, he remembered all right – he still had the scar on his palm where the pair had cut themselves to allow their blood to mingle. He’d told his dad he’d cut it taking a header off his skateboard. Weren’t no biggie, Dad. And Scott was right. They’d both pledged. Blood brothers. No limits. Josh hadn’t known what it meant until tonight, until Scott had looked at him with those cold blue eyes and told him what they were gonna do, like it was stealing sweets from the Paki shop. But it weren’t. Somebody could die and then what? Is that what Scott wanted? Take a life then strut round Juvey with a gangsta’s rep?

  Josh looked down now at the scar on his cupped hand.

  ‘You deaf as well as gay?’ shouted Scott.

  Josh decided against an answer. He kept his eyes to the ground and shrugged. Over the last few weeks, he’d realised his best mate had changed. Worse, his short fuse had got shorter since scoring that skunk. Now the flex was all wrong. They weren’t mates no more. Scott made the running a
nd he didn’t expect no backchat.

  ‘I said, are you deaf as well as gay?’ repeated Scott, bristling with aggression. Josh couldn’t meet his eye and Scott was pleased. Eyes down meant he was top dog and Josh knew it. ‘How many fags you got left?’ he demanded coldly.

  ‘Couple,’ mumbled Josh.

  ‘Gimme one,’ ordered Scott, waggling a hand as a hurry-up.

  Josh stared at his friend. Yeah, he was different. Taking it all too serious.

  ‘You’re just kids, Joshua,’ his dad had always told him. ‘Have a childhood.’ Josh had feigned ignorance but the point had hit home. He would have reached it by himself anyway. All this gang stuff was for kids. Unless you wanted to be a criminal the rest of your life, getting out was part of growing up.

  He fumbled in the pocket of his hoodie and slapped the packet into Scott’s hand. ‘You have ’em both, bruv. I’m gettin’ back to my block.’

  He hunched himself against the cold and set off along Carlton Road towards Whitaker Road.

  ‘You can’t,’ Scott shouted after him.

  ‘Watch me,’ said Josh over his shoulder.

  ‘It’s trick or treat,’ pleaded Scott.

  ‘It’s also pissing down.’ Josh gave reason one last try. ‘There’s no one about, Scoot. What’s the point?’

  ‘It’s me and you, bruv. That’s the point.’

  Josh walked away.

  ‘Don’t turn your back on me,’ screamed Scott. ‘I’m connected.’ No response from the retreating Josh. Scott played his last card, his voice rising to a whine. ‘Your dad said we had to stick together, remember?’

  Josh turned, steam rising from him. ‘Then come with me. Let’s go mine, have a pizza and play MW3.’

  Scott hesitated. He was wet. Cold too. And pizza sounded good. But there was a principle involved. They had a pass to do whatever they wanted and his pussy mate wanted to go home to Mummy. Decision made, his young face deformed into a scowl. ‘You’re a faggot, Stapleton. We still got shit to do. Text your dad you’re staying mine or we never speak again.’ No response. ‘Fucking omerta, man.’

  Josh hesitated. Scott was his friend. They’d taken an oath. Omerta was right. He’d taught Scott the word. Found it on Wiki. He stood to attention and gave Scott their special salute, the one they’d copied off a game on Xbox. ‘Laters.’

  ‘Pussy,’ spat Scott at Josh’s retreating frame. He looked up into the night sky at the rain now falling harder in the sulphurous glow of the street lights. ‘It’s always down to me,’ he shouted. ‘I’m the leader.’ He pulled out a cigarette and lit the end, pulling in such a long belt of smoke that it burned his throat. He wanted to shout something more cutting while Josh was in range but thought he might start coughing like a girl, so he settled for a V sign towards his friend, now splashing into the distance.

  Can’t count on nobody, even blood. ‘Always down to me.’

  The man watched the two boys from the cover of an overgrown garden. ‘Scoot,’ he repeated with soft relish, not sure he’d heard the name right in the din of the rain. He looked back to the pair. Scoot’s friend had given him an odd salute and was stomping away, shoulders hunched, hood yanked back over his head. The man raised his right arm to ape the salute, still watching.

  They’d argued, he was sure, because Scoot stayed behind, shouting something at the other boy which the man couldn’t pick up above the noise of the strengthening deluge rat-tat-tatting on his canvas poncho. He was tempted to lower his own hood to try and catch the gist but the dialogue was clearly over and the other boy was nearly invisible in the downpour.

  He watched as Scoot continued to shout insults which his disappearing friend ignored as he walked away without a backward glance. A smile began to broaden around the man’s mouth. Two boys – the right age, the right profile. They’d argued and now each was alone in the dark and deserted streets.

  ‘Perfect,’ breathed the man. He kept his gaze on Scoot, taller and more powerful than his absent friend. He was smoking a cigarette like he’d been on sixty a day for years then started posing, arms crossed, fingers splayed into gun shapes. A fit of coughing curtailed the posturing.

  ‘Didn’t your parents ever tell you smoking is bad for your health?’ The man smiled faintly in the darkness, not taking his eyes from the prize, almost sniffing the air like a wolf on the scent of a deer. ‘Course not. They only told you how special you were. And one day you actually started to believe it. Now no one can tell you what to do because you think you’re a man.’

  The man looked around for hurrying pedestrians or hardy dog walkers on the way to Normanton Park. There was no one. Cars were all dormant, curtains all drawn against the elements.

  ‘Perfect.’

  Ahead of him, Scott threw his butt into the road and marched away in the same direction as his absent friend. The man heard the boy utter a single word, ‘Omerta,’ then stepped softly out of the shadows.

  Five

  3 November 2011 – Normanton

  Detective Sergeant John Noble took another long look at the pale corpse of the boy, his shattered head at right angles to a torso that lay twisted on the rubble-strewn ground. The dust and grime of the concrete base had partially absorbed the black puddle of old blood lying like a halo around his head. For the first time, Noble managed to bypass the boy’s milky eyes that seemed to glare back at him, rebuking the voyeur in him.

  Getting down on his knees, Noble gazed at the jagged edge of another injury in the midriff where the boy had landed on something sharp. Without rolling the body on to its back, it was impossible to tell what had gouged the long gash across his stomach. But whatever had corrupted the integrity of the boy’s stomach had allowed the merest peep of viscera to push against the lips of the lesion.

  Noble couldn’t look directly at the youngster’s slim, smooth legs and bared buttocks, naked below the waist, his tracksuit bottoms pulled down to his ankles and bunched against his stockinged feet. God alone knows what the boy’s been through.

  Far from heaven though he was this night, Noble was confident he could fill in the blanks although he took temporary comfort from the lack of visible bruising around the anus.

  ‘Where are your shoes, son?’ Noble mumbled, righting himself, hand twitching in his ache for a chemical friend. He took out a cigarette from beneath his protective layers and, without lighting up, jammed it behind his ear to let the virgin tobacco’s earthy aroma promise future comfort.

  Like lightning striking, the flash of the camera heightened the drama of the desolate tableau as scene of crime officers went about their grisly work. Noble stepped back for the bigger picture as DI Brook had taught him. It didn’t matter. Whichever way he faced, his eye returned to the boy.

  Some mother’s son. So young. So dead. And no balm to pour on parental wounds, no comfort to take from a quick and painless death. This poor kid had died in humiliation and distress over the course of many hours – maybe days – the story of his final moments evidenced by the tear tracks on the undamaged side of his face as the cries for help went unheeded. In this grim place the boy had died in agony, able to feel his young life ebbing away before it had really begun.

  Noble nuzzled the cigarette, shaking off an image of the young man pleading in vain for his mummy. He stared at the first-floor landing to plot the body’s trajectory, the handrail long since torn down and used for fuel by squatters and other indigents. Judging by the distance of the corpse from the top of the stairs, the boy hadn’t merely fallen or stumbled. He had been thrown, launched even, from the upper storey to where he still lay, immobilised by a broken neck and maybe a collarbone and pelvis too.

  Emerging from his detection bubble, Noble turned away, becoming aware of others waiting for him to finish.

  ‘Let me know if you find the kid’s shoes,’ he said, gesturing to the nearest SOCO to commence the bagging and tagging before stepping outside on to Whitaker Road, fingering the cigarette with more urgency. He smiled briefly as he imagined Brook standing next to
him, darting a glance first at the cigarette, then up at his face until he cracked and offered his DI the pack. But Brook’s comforting presence was missing and, until DI Ford managed to drag himself out of bed, Noble was on his own.

  Far enough from the scene, he lit up with a deep sigh as he watched uniformed officers setting up the crime scene tape around the large plot of scrubland, while others stood around their flashing vehicles, waiting in vain to control a non-existent crowd, not yet awake to the drama in their midst at three in the morning.

  A black Mercedes drew to a halt behind the line of emergency vehicles and Dr Higginbottom, the duty police surgeon, already decked head to toe in protective coveralls, stepped from the vehicle. After a brief reconnoitre he made for Noble at the front of the derelict building.

  ‘Sergeant,’ said Higginbottom. The doctor’s eyes looked tired from lack of sleep despite the wind and rain trying to rouse him.

  ‘Doc. Through the entrance then second door on the right,’ said Noble. ‘Follow the lights.’

  Higginbottom glanced at Noble’s cigarette. ‘Next time you see me in the mortuary, remind me to show you a smoker’s lungs.’

  ‘Look forward to it.’

  ‘Are you the lead?’ asked Higginbottom, with little semblance of interest in Noble’s reply.

  Noble shook his head. ‘DI Ford.’

  ‘Brook still on leave, is he?’

  Noble’s smile made a reply unnecessary.

  ‘Is DI Ford with the body?’ asked Higginbottom mischievously.

  ‘No. He’s. . . been delayed,’ muttered Noble.

  Higginbottom affected surprise. ‘Really?’ With a sly grin, the doctor moved towards the building. ‘Must be traffic,’ he said, before taking his leave.

  Noble’s minute grunt of appreciation was barely audible. The doctor must know Ford lived less than half a mile away, barely across the ring road in upmarket Littleover. He’d been alerted two hours ago and could have walked to the scene in fifteen minutes.