by Jack Slater
Quickly, Tommy opened his mouth. Snapped his jaws closed.
Lockhart howled as his nose was caught between Tommy’s sharp front teeth. Tommy squeezed down on the warm skin and cartilage, stretching his lips wide open.
‘I thought we had an understanding,’ he said through his tightly clamped teeth. ‘What did I say this morning about biting your ugly nose off?’
‘Get off me or I’ll fucking kill you, you little bastard.’
‘Promises, promises.’ Tommy adjusted the grip of his teeth on the larger boy’s nose. ‘And, talking of…’
‘No!’ Lockhart shouted.
Tommy bit down hard. He could feel the grease of the other kid’s nose. The give of his nostril walls against his tongue and the roof of his mouth as Lockhart howled in pain and terror. Then something wet and warm in his mouth. He hoped it wasn’t… No, he tasted the iron tang of blood. Kept on bearing down with his teeth as he shifted his right hand from under him to grasp the back of Lockhart’s neck, pulling him in so he couldn’t escape.
Other hands were grasping and pulling at him, trying to pull him off the other boy. Lockhart’s left fist was pounding on his back, but he barely felt it. His whole awareness was focused on what was between his teeth.
‘Get off me! Get off me!’ Lockhart bellowed. Then he jerked upwards under Tommy, forcing him backwards. Tommy went with him. Used the opportunity to slide his arm around behind Lockhart’s neck and lock his hand over his own shoulder, clamping them tightly together as his other hand let go of his arm and came up around his head to grasp his ear.
Tommy gripped the ear, pulling back on it hard. He felt warm blood trickling down his chin.
‘Tommy Gayle! Release him at once.’
That wasn’t a kid’s voice, like all the others yelling around him. But Tommy was committed. He wasn’t going to back off now. He ground his teeth, making Lockhart howl even louder. Then a big hand gripped the back of his shirt and another got hold of his jaw, finger and thumb pressing in painfully from either side.
‘Let him go.’ The voice was as slow, firm and implacable as the fingers pushing into his cheeks, but Tommy was committed. There was no winning here. Not any more. But he couldn’t give in. Couldn’t show a trace of weakness or pity.
He pulled harder on Lockhart’s left ear, twisting at the same time. Lockhart wailed. The blood flowed even more freely from his nose, dripping steadily from Tommy’s chin. Agony coursed through his cheeks and jaw.
‘Gayle, let go. Now.’ The warder’s voice was harder, angrier, as he held on relentlessly. ‘Give it up or I’ll break your damned jaw and where’ll that get you, d’you think?’
Tommy saw the chance and took it. Tugging even harder on Lockhart’s ear, he opened his mouth and looked up at the warder, grinning, his chin red and dripping with blood. ‘Nowhere I haven’t been a hundred times before.’
CHAPTER EIGHT
Pete pulled into his drive and switched off the headlights, glad to be home – and glad there was no new decoration on the garage door. He killed the engine as the front door opened, expecting Annie to come running out and greet him.
He was surprised when, instead, it was Louise who came out, closing the door behind her and standing on the doorstep, arms folded.
He stepped out of the car, took his briefcase from the back seat and locked the silver Ford.
‘Lou? What’s up?’
Her eyes closed, her face scrunching up with emotion as her arms dropped to her sides. Then she took a breath, opened her eyes and the tears ran down her face as he dropped his briefcase and gathered her into his arms. ‘What is it, love?’
A sob escaped from her throat, then she swallowed. ‘It’s Tommy,’ she whispered, clinging to him.
Pete felt icy fear grip his body, freezing him in place like a living statue. ‘What about him?’
He wanted desperately to see her face, but she clung even more tightly to him, her bead buried into his shoulder. ‘He’s… We can’t see him. I phoned a few minutes ago. He had to be there a day before they allowed visitors. Settling-in time, they said. So I phoned to arrange it for tomorrow, after school. For me and Annie. But…’ She began to cry again. Conflicting emotions battled within Pete. Love and protectiveness for Louise made him hold onto her, comfort her as best he could, while the need to know about his son raged, For God’s sake, spit it out, woman! What’s happened? But he held on, stroking her hair with one hand while she clung to him, sobbing into the shoulder of his jacket until she finally gulped, shook her head and loosed her grip around his body.
‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered. ‘But…’
‘What is it, love? What’s happened?’ he asked gently.
‘He’s… He nearly bit some boy’s nose off. On his first day! My God, what have we raised, Pete?’
Some of the contents of the file Simon Phillips had compiled on Tommy while searching for him last year flashed through Pete’s mind and he wondered the same thing – as he had done since reading the file, months ago. Yet, his fatherly instinct kicked in behind the doubt, pushing it down, feeding that tiny residue of pride that he would never lose. Surviving, probably, he thought. Knowing what kinds of kids end up in those places and the softly, softly approach they have to use with them, these days…
He almost asked again: what happened? But no one would have the answer other than Tommy and some of the other inmates, he guessed. The staff would just have come upon the end result. Kids weren’t stupid – especially, in some ways, the kinds of kids who ended up in places like Archways. It would be a huge mistake to underestimate them, and one he’d learned long ago not to make when dealing with criminals of any age.
‘So, they’ve put him in solitary,’ he guessed. It was the ultimate punishment in places like that. ‘How long for?’
‘A day.’ Head tipped forward, she tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. Then she looked up at him, her eyes large and moist. ‘How did it come to this? Where did we go so wrong?’
‘We can’t have gone completely wrong. Look at Annie.’
The girl had been a minor miracle last year, after Tommy disappeared. As Louise had spiralled downhill into a deep clinical depression, so their daughter had stepped up, almost to the point of swapping roles with her mother, taking on responsibilities an eleven-year-old never should have needed to.
‘Yes, but…’ Louise shook her head. ‘It’s like he’s got the Devil inside him. He’s…’
‘He’s our son,’ he said firmly. ‘He’s got his problems, but he’s surviving the only way he can. He knows the score. He’s not daft. He wouldn’t have done something like that without needing to.’
‘Yes, but… to try to bite somebody’s nose off!’
‘He’s been a snotty little bugger for years.’
She stood back, staring up into his face. ‘Really? You can joke at a time like this? Jesus! No wonder we’ve raised a bloody psycho.’ She spun away, heading for the door.
Something stirred in Pete’s chest. Fear, anger, he didn’t know, but… ‘Don’t ever call him that. He might be troubled. He might be in trouble, but he’s no psycho. Rosie Whitlock will testify to that.’ He snatched up his briefcase and followed her as she opened the front door and stepped in.
‘Maybe, but that doesn’t make this a time for jokes.’
Pete took a breath, regaining control of his emotions as he fought to keep hers from pulling her back into the darkness. ‘It worked, didn’t it? You’ve got the fire back in your belly.’
‘I’ll give you fire in the belly, Pete Gayle…’
‘Good. You do that. We haven’t had a good curry in ages.’
She spun on him, fists raised. ‘I swear, you get bloody worse!’
He stepped in close, caught her round the waist with both arms and hugged her tightly. ‘Whatever gets us through, Lou.’
He felt her draw in a deep, slow breath and let it out. Then the living-room door opened and Annie burst out.
‘Daddy!’
*
Emma leaned both arms on the roof of the Nissan, drawing in deep, watching the seemingly endless flow of vehicles pass by. Finally, a bright-yellow van with a large logo on the side came through the roadworks. Orange lights began to flash on its roof and she breathed a sigh of relief.
At last.
She checked her watch. 6.38. The woman on the phone hadn’t been off by more than a few minutes. It just felt like an age had passed since she made the call. The van passed her then stopped. Reversing lights glowed and it swung half onto the verge before rolling gently back towards her, other vehicles sweeping past like impatient bats coming out for the night’s feeding.
The van stopped. The driver stepped out and headed towards her.
‘Evening, miss. What’s the problem?’
‘It just lost power and died on me. There was nothing I could do to keep it going.’ She used the remote to unlock the little car. ‘It’s not the first time it’s happened.’
‘OK. And what have you found, if anything, that gets it going again?’
‘Just time. Let it rest awhile and it’s fine. It starts up and off it goes as if nothing’s wrong. That’s the frustrating part.’
He nodded, opened the driver’s door and popped the bonnet catch.
Emma didn’t bother to watch what he was doing. She had no clue about what went on in an engine, other than that it required occasional top-ups of oil and water, and no interest either. Instead, she continued to watch the traffic pass by as the uniformed man worked under the bonnet.
The downhill flow stopped again and she glanced down towards the far end of the cones, waiting for the vehicles to start coming through from there. When a voice sounded from a few feet away, she jumped, her head snapping around, expecting it to be the repairman.
It wasn’t.
The second car back in the queue had its window rolled down and the driver was speaking to her.
‘Sorry?’
‘I said, broken down again?’
She frowned as a flutter of fear swept through her chest. ‘Excuse me?’
‘Wasn’t that the same car I saw down by the Old Mill the other night?’
Now her heart was hammering, her breathing rapid and shallow as the fear of discovery froze her brain. What should she say?
But then, she realised, she had no idea who this man was, he didn’t have a clue who she was, and she would probably never see him again. She forced a shrug. ‘It’s not the first time this has happened. I just hope it’ll be the last.’
‘I bet. Good luck with it.’ He wound the window up as the repairman moved from the engine compartment around to the passenger side of the vehicle, opened the door and ducked down to check something under the glove compartment.
Emma was torn between seeing what he was doing and trying to memorise the numberplate of the man she’d just been talking with. If she managed to remember it, she had no idea what she would do with it. What she would be able to do with it. But he was a potential witness. It felt important that she should try. That she should have some information on him.
‘There you go.’ The repairman stood up with a small object held triumphantly in his greasy hand. ‘There’s your culprit. I’ll test it, but I’d lay odds on it. A dry solder joint in this little bugger’ll stop you dead as soon as it gets warm.’
The traffic began to move in the other direction and Emma’s glance was torn away by the driver’s wave as he set off down the hill. She refocused with difficulty. ‘That tiny thing can stop an entire engine?’
‘Yep. Just like that.’ He stepped across to the back of his van, delved inside for something and fiddled with it for a moment. Then he nodded. ‘Yeah. I’ve seen it before a few times.’
‘Do you have a spare?’
He shook his head. ‘No, but like you said, give it time to cool down and it’ll get you home and back out to a garage, as long as you don’t sit in this queue for too long. The Nissan dealership should have them in stock. Take it there as soon as you get the chance. Five minutes and they’ll have it replaced and you’ll be good as new. I’ll just pop it back in for now.’
She let her eyes close briefly as she exhaled, long and slow. So, that tiny, inch-square little metal box had caused all this hassle. It seemed incredible. She opened her eyes at the click of the cover going back into place over the fuse box. ‘There you go, miss. I’ll wait with you until it gets going. Shouldn’t be long. A few minutes. Especially now I’ve had it out of there for a while.’
*
Pete passed a troubled night, worrying about all three members of his family when he wasn’t tossing and turning, his mind filled with nightmares of cannibal boys, suicidal wives, and daughters who turned into drug-crazed rebels with piercings, clothes that were barely decent and attitudes to match. By morning, he felt worse than he had when he went to bed, and that didn’t improve when, after a quick coffee and toast breakfast, he headed out to work.
He took two steps away from the front door and stopped in his tracks.
‘Shit.’
He stalked around to the other side of the car and found the situation was even worse.
All four of his tyres were completely flat.
He stepped closer, crouched to look at the nearest one. He could see no hole in it. Maybe they’d all just been let down. Bad enough, but recoverable with a bit of time and effort. He moved to the back tyre on the same side and swore again.
This one had definitely been slashed. Or, more accurately, stabbed, he saw from the shape and size of the hole in the side wall about half an inch from the rim.
He moved on around the car. The third tyre had been punctured in the same way, but the fourth again showed no sign of damage. He unscrewed the valve cap and found a tiny ball bearing inside. Returning to the first tyre he’d checked, he found the same.
So, two suspects? Or one who’d stabbed the first two then chickened out and used a quieter approach? Or, again, maybe stabbing two was all they needed to do, to achieve what they wanted. People only had one spare, after all.
Was this just to piss him off like the painting on the garage door, or was there more to it?
And how had he heard nothing when it felt like he’d been awake most of the night?
He gave growl of frustration, took out his phone and flipped through the contacts list. He would get the tyre people out to replace the two damaged ones and, in the meantime, pump up the other two.
‘Good morning. Tyre-Right. How can I help?’
‘Hello. I’ve come out to my car this morning and found that someone’s slashed two of the tyres.’ He crouched by the nearest one to read off the specifications from the side wall.
‘OK. We’ll get someone out to you as soon as we can. We’ll just need the address and the tyre size.’
As he quoted the address, he was thinking that he’d have to let his team know too. They’d be expecting him a lot sooner than he was going to be able to make it into the station this morning. This was the last thing he needed while he was in the middle of a difficult case.
Or was that the point, the cynical side of his mind suggested as he ended the phone call. Did someone not want him to solve the case?
‘No.’ He shook his head. That was just too unlikely.
So, who did want to mess with him? He sighed. Unfortunately, the list was a long one. But, he had at least half an hour to kill. He headed back inside. He would call Dave on the landline.
*
‘Hey, boss, what’s up?’
It was Jill, not Dave, who had picked up the call in the squad room. His mind pictured the small, slim PC reaching across to pick up the phone on the deserted desk next to hers because Dave hadn’t turned up yet.
‘Somebody seems to have taken a dislike to me,’ he said.
‘Hard to imagine, boss.’
He could hear the smile in her voice.
‘I know. Isn’t it? But, this is the second time they’ve targeted my house this week. The first was just a spray-can job on the gara
ge door. This time, they’ve slashed two of my tyres and let the other two down, so I’m waiting for Tyre-Right.’
‘Dare I say that using the garage would have saved you the trouble?’
‘Not if you know what’s good for you, Jill. I didn’t have a good night and I’m not having a good morning, so tread careful.’
‘Got it, boss.’
‘I’ll be there as soon as I can.’
‘Right, boss.’
Pete put the phone down and turned towards Louise, who was watching him from the sofa.
‘So, who the hell is it?’ she asked. ‘Who’s got it in for us now?’
*
‘Un-bloody-believable! Men!’
Tanya plonked herself down in the chair opposite Emma and slammed her handbag onto her desk.
‘What about them?’ Emma asked, not that she was particularly interested in the younger girl’s infamously varied love life.
‘Bloody misogynist pigs, the lot of them. Do they all think we’re here just for sex and cooking?’
Emma sighed inwardly. She was going to hear about whatever it was that had happened to the office junior, whether she wanted to or not. ‘What happened now?’
Tanya flicked her long dark hair back over her shoulder. ‘My neighbour couldn’t bring me in this morning, so I had to get a taxi. What a bloody rip-off! Six quid! And it didn’t save me more than ten minutes over walking it! If it wasn’t for these heels…’ She huffed.
What’s that got to do with misogynist pigs? Emma thought. But Tanya hadn’t finished.
‘Then, to top it off, the bloody taxi driver came on to me. Put his hand on my leg, for God’s sake! Jesus, he was old enough to be my dad. And talk about ugly! He had a face like a hammered steak. And he stank of curry. I mean, I’m no racist, but really…?’
Emma frowned. ‘He put his hand on your leg? What did you do?’
‘I just looked at it, looked at him, crossed my legs and my arms and stared him out. He was driving, so he had to look away, and he took his hand away at the same time. But, I mean… Where does he get off, putting his hand on me in the first place?’