by Ruth Dugdall
Ged sniffed. “A kid who murdered a kid. And we’re giving him a prime flat in the marina.” He pushed a piece of paper across the desk, “Here’s the address.”
Cate made a note and handed it to Penny who continued to update them. “Jessica is posting on Facebook, ‘please help me find Humber Boy B’ et cetera, but she’s just fishing, she has no idea where he is. If we can just keep this from the press and vigilantes we’ll be fine. Things will die down after a few weeks. He needs to live like a hermit, one on a vow of silence.”
“I’d like to think we can do more than that, and give him a chance at a normal life.” Cate said, quietly but with feeling. “He was only ten when it happened. Barely formed.”
“Still ten in here,” said Steve, tapping his temple. “Don’t go thinking you can make a silk purse from a sow’s ear, Cate. Keep his identity secret and he can rot in his flat for all I care. At least he’s got a view.”
Beyond the conference room window the blueness of the sky now seemed oppressive in its constancy.
“Have you met him yet, Cate?” asked Penny.
“Our first meeting is today.”
“He’s strange. Of course, he’s been locked up since he was a child. But he’s not our usual sort.”
“What’s our usual sort?” Cate was genuinely interested, having lost the notion years ago that such a person existed. Working in the prison with Rose Wilks, then supervising the Suffolk Cannibal, Alice Mariani, Cate didn’t make assumptions anymore.
“You know how it usually is, young man, just out of prison. How they blag, how pale they are and cocky, fluent in Hackney patois and bullshit. Ben’s different. Looks like a choir boy. But evil.”
An evil choir boy sounded like something from a tacky horror film.
“What he did was evil.” Cate said, thinking of Roger Palmer’s witness statement, the boy in the single red trainer hitting the water with the weight of death. “But he was just a child. There’s got to be some reason, some sort of explanation.”
“There is. He’s evil. End of story,” said Ged, now standing. “Are we done here?”
4
Ben
Something’s wrong.
At first I think it’s the sun, it’s too bright and making me blink. There was a storm yesterday, grumbling thunder then cracks of lightning, but today the sky is as blue as… as…
I haven’t seen blue in very many different ways since I was ten, so all I can think of is blue as a prison shirt that’s just come out of its plastic. I only had that happen once, a prison shirt that hadn’t been worn by fifteen other sweaty bodies. As blue as the water after that shirt’s first washed, when the dye seeps into the milky bucket. I saw that a lot when I was working in the laundry, last prison but one. It was a good job, a privileged one for cons close to release, but my fingers wrinkled and cracked and then got itchy. Turns out I have eczema. So when I was moved to Suffolk, my final prison stay in open conditions, I asked for a different job. My personal officer said I should be working in the community anyway, get some experience of the outside world after being locked away for so long, so I got placed down the road with the Suffolk Punch horses. I’d never touched a horse before, not even a normal-sized one, and a Punch is a giant. When I was told I’d be grooming Axel, the stud, I was scared. I had to learn how to move around the horse, not behind its back, and slowly, so it could see what I was doing.
That horse was just like me. It just wanted to see what was going on and not be taken by surprise, no-one could be blamed for that. An animal only kicks out because it’s scared, but the kick will be vicious and a bone is easily broken.
And then I realise it isn’t the sun that’s the problem, it’s that I can’t see all that’s going on and there are people behind me, moving and talking. I want to kick out because I’m afraid.
For the first time in my life I’m on my own. I haven’t been alone in eight years. Our home was a narrow terrace, upstairs was only Mum’s bedroom and a smaller room that I shared with my brother, Adam. Half-brother, technically, and his dad Stuart lived with us too, when he wasn’t on an Icelandic trawler out in the Arctic somewhere. Sometimes, Mum would get tired of waiting for him to show up with the brass so other men would come and go, and we’d eat for a few days. Stuart would always return eventually, with a pocket of cash and enough fish so we’d be sick of it after a fortnight, telling us about waves as high as buildings and fish as tall as a man. Cuffing me round the head every chance he got, giving Adam treats, then disappearing again for weeks on end, sending Mum into a spiral of sadness that meant she slept lots and there would be no food again, not even fish, and we knew it wouldn’t be long before we’d hear strange noises coming from her bedroom. It was Adam who got me up for school, who made me wash, who stole milk from the neighbours early each morning. Whoever came or went, whatever was going on with Stuart and Mum, Adam stayed the same. And, always, it was Adam and me against the world. Until the bridge.
After that, we got separated.
First, I was with a police officer who looked at me like I was rotten, then a social worker who looked at me like I was ill. Later it was secure unit staff, psychiatrists, prison officers, teachers and other inmates. But I was never alone and now what’s behind me is the closed prison gate and what’s ahead is a place I don’t know – how can you know anywhere if you’re in a locked room all your adult life? – and a new home and maybe work and even a new name. The name I used to have, the one Mum gave me is gone now, thrown into the Humber with everything else that died.
I keep walking, down the gravel path that leads to the train station, checking again that the train warrant is in my pocket. It’s all I have: a train warrant to take me to Ipswich, the address of the probation office and a duffel bag with my drawings and some letters, along with the handful of birthday and Christmas cards that Mum remembered to send. On some she’d signed Stuart’s name though we all knew what he really thought about me, he’d told a whole courtroom.
Letters and cards, not worth much, and I shouldn’t keep them. Not with my new life, new name and everything. But if I destroy them, then what have I got to show for the ten years I lived before that one moment on the Humber Bridge?
Melton train station is small, a village outpost that happens to be just a few miles from the prison. It must be obvious where I’ve come from; the prison stench hangs on me, even in my new T-shirt and jeans. My shoes came from a catalogue. I saw a picture of some I really liked, red canvas they were, but Kevin, my personal officer, just laughed at that and instead he picked out a cheap white pair. He said they wouldn’t last but they were all my allowance would stretch to. My jeans came from a proper shop, I picked them myself while Kevin waited a few steps away, trying not to look obvious about the fact that he was watching me. My T-shirt I hesitated over. I kept thinking, But would Ben like it? I’m still new at being Ben and maybe he likes different things to the old me. So I chose a blue T-shirt with a cartoon of Superman on it because I thought it was tacky and babyish and so surely something my old self would hate. Also, because Superman takes off his glasses and he’s a better person, a hero, and I’d like to transform like that. Only I wouldn’t go from ordinary to hero but from villain to ordinary.
The station is a platform and a track. That’s it. I need to wait for a train to take me to Ipswich and I can see the timetable on the wall. I couldn’t have read that eight years ago, but now I can see the times and work out that the train will be here soon.
I used to be into trains, Adam and me both were, back when we watched Thomas the Tank Engine while Mum slept off the booze or blues and Stuart was gone to sea again, with no notice of when he might return. Adam would take me to the toilet and fetch me water from the tap when I complained of hunger. The cartoon made me forget any of the bad things and we both liked that the programme was repeated, again and again, over weeks and months when he should have been at school and I should have been at nursery, but at least we could both say the lines of the Fat Controller, so
we were learning something. We learned not to answer the door, too, after the social worker found us eating out-of-date Smash from the box, the only food we could find, and surrounded by empty milk bottles. She asked us how long it was that Mum had been in bed, and when Adam had last gone to school, and we told her the truth. When Stuart came back from sea he had to go to a meeting and he hated those. His muscly frame squeezed into a shirt, his bald head that looked tough on the dockside but thuggish in an office. When he came home he was in a foul temper and I got the worst of it. He said that if we ever, ever, told the truth to anyone again then we’d both be taken away and put into care. And even though I didn’t think I’d miss Mum too badly, and I’d be glad to get away from Stuart, I couldn’t let them separate me from Adam so I kept my mouth shut. I thought if I always kept my mouth shut then Adam and me would always be together. But it didn’t work out that way.
Watching Thomas on TV wasn’t preparation for this. I haven’t been on a train, not ever, and I feel the warrant in my pocket again.
The train arrives so fast I have to jump back from the edge. When the doors open I step inside, look around and take a seat next to a window. There’s no-one else on the train, just a man bursting out of a blue shirt and navy jacket walking towards me, brandishing a machine, something to check that I’m legal. Fat Controller comes to mind but I know that’s not right, that’s from years ago when I wasn’t Humber Boy B.
I show him my warrant and he slides it into the machine, which spits it back out. Fat Controller looks down at me, he knows I’m from the prison. This must happen a lot, maybe it’s why they keep the train stopping at that station when all the locals must have cars and the village is tiny. He can’t see it, where my badness is hidden, can’t do anything but hand my warrant back and walk back down the train, a futile search for other people to check.
The train rumbles along the track, rocking me. I feel a bit sick, then I remember I’ve felt sick since I woke so it’s not the train causing it, but still I worry about vomiting. What would Fat Controller say if I puked on the floor, would he throw me off onto the next platform? Then how would I get to Ipswich?
Stuart had no patience with illness. “You think you feel sick, you wanna try being on a boat in a storm,” he’d say. “That’d stop your mithering.”
The train pulls into Ipswich, the platform is busy with businessmen, women in dresses, kids in blazers and ties, all stood chatting and reading papers and drinking coffee. It’s early, before nine, and they’re going to work or school. I hitch my duffel bag over my shoulder and start to walk towards the town centre, to the probation office. My first task in my new life as Ben.
I try not to think about my old life because it hurts. Since I got found guilty the nearest I got to Hull was Swinfen Hall Prison in the Midlands, though that hardly counts as north. Anyway, a prison is a prison and I never saw the outside world. I was near the Scottish border for two years but I never saw a loch or a mountain. The local news was my only way of knowing what the closest town looked like and I’d crane my neck to see beyond the newsreader for a glimpse of green or blue in the picture behind. But then they moved me to a Suffolk prison and the parole board thought it would be safest for me to be released here too. I’d like to be farther north, near my family, my mum and especially Adam, even if I can’t see them, but that isn’t possible. And Suffolk looks good to me so far.
How often do you look up into a tree? Sat down below, leaning on the tree trunk, do you ever look up to where the massive boughs hang above your head? You’d never expect it to fall and hurt you, though things happen like that. Things happen. The thing on the bridge happened when I was just ten. Just two weeks before I’d had a cake with candles and a football from Mum. It needed air, and we didn’t have a pump so I never got to use it. It was the last thing she ever gave me. The present from Adam was the best though.
It was a bow and arrow, not from a shop, but one he’d made with a perfectly bent piece of wood and some twine he’d nicked from somewhere. He made the arrows from doweling, sharpened the tips with his penknife and scored the butts for the best bit: real feathers. He must have searched for ages to find such perfect feathers, large and grey. I didn’t know what bird had gifted these, which tree gave the wood, I just loved it. He always knew what I wanted, even before I knew myself.
On my tenth birthday, playing with my bow and arrow, I had no idea that in just two weeks I wouldn’t have a brother anymore or a mum or even myself. I had no idea what was coming.
Mum wasn’t so good at birthdays but for my tenth, apart from forgetting a pump for the football, she got it about right. On Hull’s waterfront there’s an aquarium called The Deep, and we’d go past it if we were out Hessle way trying to kill a few hours. I’d always whine a bit, trying to pull her towards the long line of lucky kids. “Think I’ve got the brass for that?” she’d say. “Not meant for the likes of us. You want to see fish, you watch that Nemo DVD I got you. Or look in our freezer.”
So who knows where she got the money or what changed her mind but on my birthday we went. “It’s special, being ten,” she said. “Double digits. Besides, they take Tesco vouchers.”
The aquarium had promised so much over those forlorn walks past the outside, the posters of squid squirting black ink, the fluorescent jellyfish with tentacles like something from outer space. As I pushed through the turnstile I felt like I should just keep pushing, going round and round, forever trapped in that wheel of perfect anticipation so I didn’t get let down like when dad sent a postcard to say he’d soon be docked in England and he’d be sure to visit, but he never showed up, or when I had a parcel to open at Christmas and it was a hand-me-down jumper from my mum’s cousin who lived in Goole.
But I needn’t have worried – the aquarium was magical, walking through tunnels of glass as sturgeons and horseshoe crabs and wide-mouthed sharks swam above and around. Even Mum was impressed.
There was a section called Under the Humber. I remember two bicycles, covered in clams, the wheels all wonky. There was a play area built like a boat that the lady from the aquarium told us was an exact replica of a herring boat wrecked at the bottom of the river. I climbed into the bottom of the play-ship, amazed by the boxes of rope and rigging, replicas of things that rest at the bottom in a watery grave.
Still rest.
I can’t think about what else is under the water now, along with the broken boat and the abandoned bikes. A lost shoe, a boy’s scuffed red trainer. The Rolo wrapper from his pocket.
No. I can’t think about that, it is lost to the Humber.
My life isn’t really divided into two, it’s in three. Before I was ten. My time in prison. And now. A new start.
Ipswich. My new home. I hitch my bag up again and follow the bulk of the walkers towards town, following the flow of the buses and traffic, and hoping I’m not late for my first appointment at the probation office. My new life has begun.
5
The Day Of
Roger Palmer woke, not feeling like Mr Palmer, Sir, form tutor of 4P and deputy head of year, but feeling like himself. This was because school was closed.
Not a political man, Roger had hedged and ducked months of staff room conversations and debates, but he had still put his name on the sign-up sheet for the coach to London to march on parliament with the NUT.
“The bus leaves at eight, so make sure you frame,” announced Jessica Watts, head of year, organiser of Christmas plays, summer fetes and now strike action. And his lover for the past fourteen months.
Jessica was the reason why he’d put his name down for the coach, hoping to sit beside her on the journey, to maybe go for coffee in Covent Garden after the main event and talk some more about when she was going to move in with him and Cheryl.
He woke knowing none of this would happen now, last night she had ruined everything.
He peered at the alarm clock – eight-forty. The coach would be long gone. He couldn’t go and let her see him like this. He was angry that she
’d ended things, just when they had started to plan for her to tell Dave about the affair. She’d been with her husband since they were seventeen, but that marriage had run its course. Once Noah started school, Jess had decided to turn her life around. She had completed an access course, then a degree and trained as a teacher, caught up on everything she’d given up when she fell pregnant. Now she was moving forward and leaving Dave behind. Her affair with Roger was part of that, her new life, she’d told him so, hadn’t she?
But now she’d gone and changed her mind.
“I can’t, Roger. I want to be with you, God knows I do, but I can’t take Noah away from his dad.”
She’d rubbed the salt in a bit, saying how she couldn’t expose Noah to the pain of parental divorce, playing on Roger’s own experience when Rachel left. All the times he’d told Jess how damaged Cheryl had been by the split, how she sometimes acted out to get attention. He’d been called to the high school on a few occasions because they said she was bullying younger girls, locking them in the loos and making them cry, but he’d soon sorted it out and made sure she didn’t misbehave again. “I’m doing my best with her, but her mother walked out on us,” he told the school counsellor, who was starting to interfere. The woman had changed her tone then, a look of pity on her face, saying it can’t be easy, a man raising a teenage girl alone. Jess had said the same thing, and he wasn’t above taking advantage of such sympathy. It was true, after all, that they had both been damaged by Rachel’s selfish behaviour. But his own words were now being used against him as a reason for Jess to stay with a man she didn’t love. Jess, the feminist, having to concede that Noah needed his dad, needed the convention of two parents under the same roof, even if those parents didn’t love each other. It was utter bullshit.
“Noah will be happy, he’ll adjust,” he had tried to reassure Jess. “Children are so resilient. Look at Cheryl, she’s much better now, hardly ever has tantrums and that silly bullying phase has totally stopped. And she never even mentions her mum. And we’ll make sure Noah understands, won’t we? We’ll be a new family for him.”