by Kim Slater
Tyson didn’t even growl and bark at the men. He just looked sadly at Tony like he didn’t want to leave him.
The three policemen walked up to Tony.
One of them said, ‘Tony Jacobs, I am arresting you on a charge of cruelty to an animal.’
Tony started shouting.
‘It’s nowt to do with anyone else – he’s my dog.’
‘Yeah, he’s our dog,’ shouted Ryan. ‘Just eff off.’
Tony had to go with them in the police car to make a statement.
Some of the people on the street clapped before they went back inside their houses.
Ryan did a spit towards them.
I waited ten minutes before I went back into the house.
I opened the kitchen door a tiny bit and heard Ryan’s game blasting out. Then the noise stopped.
‘I liked him, you know,’ he said. Tyson, I mean.’
I stood outside the living-room door. It was slightly open but I didn’t go in. I could see Ryan sitting in his gaming chair, looking at his hands.
That dog loved me. I used to take him down the riverbank before he turned nasty and bit me,’ he said. ‘I don’t know how it came to this. It wasn’t my fault.’
His voice broke in the middle, like a dried-out biscuit.
‘I think he’ll be OK now,’ I said.
‘Watch this,’ he went on.
I opened the door and stepped inside the room. It was cosy and warm. I wished I could sit in there sometimes with Mum and watch TV.
Ryan turned his game on again and started pummelling the controls on his lap. The screen showed the viewpoint from Ryan’s gun. He was a big, tough soldier in the game and he got to do a lot of bad things.
I watched as the room filled with the sound of gunfire. Soon, guts and brains exploded all over the screen.
‘Pretty good, eh?’ He grinned, hammering the controls like a maniac. ‘You better go up now. Dad’ll be back soon.’
I took two biscuits out of the tin on the table next to Ryan and crept upstairs.
First, I did some sketches of Tyson’s rescue mission by the RSPCA. I thought they’d done great but I still like the police more. The RSPCA can’t do anything unless the police help them so they’re not really in charge.
Tyson wasn’t like a matchstick-legged dog. Lowry painted scrawny little beasts, where you couldn’t even tell the breed.
‘Mongrels’, Miss Crane called them.
Tyson was friendly like Lowry’s dogs but he was massive and you could tell, even at a distance, he was a Rottweiler.
I drew all the pictures that actually happened in real life. Then I drew one where Tony was cramped up in the cage instead of Tyson. He was crouching down, looking scared.
Tony had no food or water. Me and the RSPCA men were poking at him through the bars, with sharp sticks.
Tyson was big and strong again in the sketch and he stood on his two back legs like a human, turning the key in a big padlock on the cage door. He was getting his own back. I drew him fierce, not friendly.
After that, I ate the biscuits to stop my tummy rumbling and wrote down in my notebook about ringing the hospital.
I took my letter and photograph from Sky News out of my satchel and tucked it inside the cover of my Beano annual. I was careful to make sure there were no creases in it.
I decided I would draw a really good sketch of Martin Brunt catching a very bad murderer like Raoul Moat, and send it to him.
At 8.16 p.m., I heard a car pull up outside. I turned off my bedroom light and looked out of the window. Tony got out and banged the roof a couple of times before it drove away. Men do that to each other as a way of saying ‘See you later’.
I left the light off and curled up under my blanket. I liked to sleep in my clothes because it kept me warmer during the night. I heard the back door open and slam shut. I started to feel sick and shaky. I wished the police had sent Tony to prison.
I waited.
I felt as if I was to blame for Tyson being taken. I thought Tony would be angry if he knew I’d given him the ham sandwich. But he would have liked one if he’d been starving.
After a bit, I heard the back door go again and I heard Mum’s voice. I wanted to go down and see her, but it’s best to stay under your blanket when you are all shaky like jelly and Tony is in a bad mood.
‘What are you involved in? What do these visitors of yours want?’ I heard Mum cry out.
The rolled-up bits of tissue I’d pushed into my ears didn’t make the shouting any quieter. I prayed out loud Mum wouldn’t get any more bruises. I prayed Tyson would get better and be happy in his new home.
When I got to school the next day, I told Miss Crane all about the raid.
She took out a photograph of her two dogs. They were very cute black-and-white Staffies. They were both big and strong. One was a boy and one was a girl. Miss Crane said the girl was the boss, even though she was smaller.
Miss Crane carried on staring at the photo, even after she’d shown it to me. Her face looked strange and she said, ‘I’d kill anyone who hurt my dogs.’
It made my tummy swirl a bit. I don’t like it when people say or do different things to usual.
Miss Crane looked up from the photo.
‘I’m sorry, Kieran, I shouldn’t have said that.’ She put the photo back in her bag. ‘It’s just that it really upsets me that people can be so cruel to an innocent animal.’
It felt OK then because she had gone back to normal.
‘Tony said someone had reported him to the RSPCA,’ I said. ‘But he didn’t know who.’
Miss Crane did a tiny smirk and looked out of the window. She didn’t say anything.
I was worried about Tyson but Miss Crane said the RSPCA would find him a new home. They had people who took care of abused animals and got them well again, she said. Then the animals were happy like they used to be before they were treated cruelly.
I wished some kind people would come and take my mum away and make her better when Tony hurts her. I’d like to see my mum’s smiley, happy face again and for her not to be at work all the time. Then we could do stuff like we used to, like walking and kicking leaves down the embankment in our patterned wellies.
‘What’s wrong?’ said Miss Crane. ‘You look upset.’
‘Nothing,’ I said.
‘Shall we have a little talk about how things are at home?’ she asked.
‘No,’ I said. ‘Everything is normal.’
There was a new boy in our class. He came from a country called Uganda. He had the blackest skin I’d ever seen. Miss Crane said Uganda is a very hot country and so people’s skin needs to be as dark as possible so it doesn’t burn.
My white skin would frazzle in a second out there but Karwana’s skin is OK in both countries.
The whole class was told we should make Karwana very welcome and help him as much as we could. Did we understand? Everyone said yes, but at break and dinnertime, some people were still nasty to him, even on his first day.
Carlton Blake said, ‘Eff off back to your own country, Car Wanker.’
You should call people by their proper names. That is one of the school rules that everyone has to agree to when they come to Meadows Comp.
But hardly anyone listens to the rules around here.
At dinner-time, I saw Karwana standing on his own, frozen in the middle of the playground like a statue.
Someone kicked a ball at his head. He didn’t even know to hide at the edge somewhere.
‘Do you want to stand over there with me?’ I said, pointing.
He didn’t say anything but he followed me down to the bottom of the field.
‘Thank you for being my friend,’ he said, when we stopped walking.
I couldn’t believe he could speak English. I can’t speak any Ugandan.
‘Swahili’, Miss Crane called it.
He taught me you say his name like this: ‘Kah-wah-nah’. You could tell he didn’t like being called ‘Car Wanker’.
‘My name means Born During Wartime,’ he said. ‘What does your name mean, Keer-Ron?’
My name didn’t mean anything. I wish it did. Born During Wartime sounded brilliant. I liked how he said my name, even though it sounded wrong.
Two girls from our class came over and touched Karwana’s face. He smiled and his teeth were massively white. They giggled and ran off. Girls can be so dumb.
People at school never like new kids coming, apart from if someone is really tough and in a gang. Then they are scared of them and try and make friends. They hate people who are from different countries, like Karwana.
They think once they live somewhere, it belongs to them. The Trent is my river but I wouldn’t mind Karwana looking at it. What if the council said the embankment belongs to us and you and Jean can’t sit down there any more?
I would go crazy because nature doesn’t belong to any person – it’s for everyone to enjoy. Two people in my class even went to Spain for a holiday last year because both their mum and dad are working and they live in one of the new houses, away from the trouble.
You can go anywhere in the world you want to, if you have a job.
‘I am going to visit Los Angeles when I’m a top reporter,’ I told Karwana. ‘Do you watch CSI?’
He shook his head and smiled his dazzly smile.
Karwana was on second dinner-sitting with me. I showed him how to hand his token in at the door of the dinner hall, to the Dinner Bag. Some dinner ladies are nice but most are bossy if they think you’re messing about, even if you’re new and you don’t know what to do.
Karwana was even worse than me for food that matched. There was nothing there he liked to eat.
‘What’s your favourite food?’ I asked.
‘Matoke. It is mashed green bananas, very tasty.’
It sounded gross.
‘Do you like sausage and mash? They go together.’
He didn’t know what sausage and mash was, until I showed him. He made a face.
He had a bit of chicken in the end but he said he wished he could have it with some ugali. He explained it was maize meal made into a sort of porridge.
I thought about what it would be like if I had to go to school in Uganda and all they had at dinner was mashed green bananas and ugali porridge and there was nothing there I liked. It was mental.
After school I went straight down to the embankment.
Jean was on the bench with her blanket. She said hello but kept her eyes looking at the floor.
‘What’s wrong?’ I said.
‘I miss him,’ she said. ‘We used to sit together in the afternoons and put the world to rights.’
She meant Colin.
Jean said she didn’t feel like answering my questions about him.
‘It’s the only way we’ll find out what happened,’ I said. ‘All crimes get solved like this on CSI.’
‘Go on then,’ said Jean, eventually. ‘Fire away.’
‘Was there anybody Colin talked to a lot? A man, maybe? Was he scared of anyone?’
‘Nobody,’ said Jean. ‘Apart from the young man with the beard. He used to come down to see Colin now and again.’
My heart did a little blip. The best detectives run on their gut feelings. That means, even before you get any evidence, a feeling comes that you are on the right track.
‘You didn’t tell me that before.’
Jean shrugged. ‘I forgot. Anyway, I didn’t see Colin with him very often. They just used to have a little chat under the bridge sometimes and then the man would go away again.’
‘Did Colin seem scared of him?’
‘No,’ said Jean. ‘He always seemed quite pleased to see him.’
‘What did they talk about?’
‘Haven’t got a clue,’ said Jean. ‘I don’t listen to other people’s conversations. I’d make a rubbish detective, wouldn’t I?’
I asked Jean if she’d seen the man recently.
‘He came down the day before poor Colin died,’ she said. ‘I haven’t seen him since.’
It was a very important piece of evidence that Jean had only just thought to tell me. Questioning always uncovers the clues.
I ran through Jean’s answers once more in my mind so I remembered everything to record in my notebook later.
‘Can you remember what he looks like?’ I asked.
Jean nodded. ‘Pretty much. Why?’
‘Wait here,’ I said.
I ran home. It took me six minutes.
I walked through the side gate and checked that the living-room curtains were closed before I walked across the yard to the kitchen door.
Tyson’s shed door was open. It was strange knowing he wasn’t in there any more. I hoped he was settled in his new home with kind owners who gave him treats and took him for walks.
The kitchen door wasn’t closed properly. I slipped in and went into the hallway. I could hear Ryan’s game and smell Tony’s funny cigarette smell.
I got my notepad and sketchbook from under the bed and put them into my school satchel.
I heard the stairs creak.
I stopped moving and listened. They creaked again.
Someone was coming up the stairs.
I felt like my arms and legs were frozen. I tried to stay calm and breathe but my chest was tight and it felt like I was being pricked all over with pins and needles.
My bedroom door opened very slowly.
Tony stood in the doorway.
Tony didn’t say anything. He just stood and looked at me.
I tried to breathe but I couldn’t. I got my inhaler out of my pocket and had a couple of puffs.
Then he said, ‘I wonder how those b*****ds knew about Tyson not being well.’
‘I don’t know,’ I said.
Tony looked around my bedroom. I was worried he might look under my bed and find my letter and photograph from Martin Brunt.
‘Got a nice little set-up here, haven’t you? Contribute nothing and live off me and your mum.’
I looked at my feet.
‘You haven’t pissed yourself again, have you?’
‘No,’ I said.
‘We were talking last night, about you. Your mum was saying how it might be best for you to go and live in a children’s home. You know, for special boys.’
It wasn’t true. It wasn’t true. It wasn’t true.
I took another puff of my inhaler.
‘I didn’t tell them about Tyson,’ I said.
‘I know that – you haven’t got the brains. But you might have told somebody who did tell them.’
‘I didn’t.’
‘You can tell me. Who was it?’
‘Nobody.’
‘Ryan saw you up the garden the other night, you lying little bleep.’
He took a couple of steps into the room. The sea sound came a bit closer.
‘I was only seeing if he was all right,’ I said. ‘He was hungry and crying. Dogs don’t like being on their own all the time – it’s cruel.’
Tony’s cheeks started to go red. I shouldn’t have said it, even though it was the truth.
I looked at his hands. They were turning into fists.
I started to shake.
The doorbell rang.
Ryan shouted. ‘Dad? You’ve got a visitor.’
The sea sound whooshed into my head and I felt dizzy.
Tony turned to go back downstairs. Outside my door, he looked back at me.
‘When I find out who told them –’ he jabbed his finger at me – ‘I’m going to rip their head off and do the same to whoever grassed me up.’
I waited in my room until the visitor had gone. When I heard the back door slam shut, I crept downstairs. Tony was back in the sitting room, filling up the little toolbox bags with Ryan. I opened the kitchen door really quietly and slipped out.
The cold air felt lovely on my face. I was all clammy and my heart was still pounding.
I shook my head: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven,
eight, nine, ten.
The swelling-up inside my head felt a bit better.
A lady across the road stopped walking her dog and looked at me.
I walked past the Spar on the way back down to the embankment.
I watched Mum serving. She looked nice, even with her yellowy, purple bruises.
My mum would never send me to a home. When you have known people all your life, you just know for sure whether they would do something or not.
It was me and Mum for keeps. We used to do this special thing where we balled our hands up and tapped the knuckles together. It meant Us, forever.
We hadn’t done it in ages. What if Tony had changed Mum’s mind about me? She might rather have Ryan as her son. Mum and Tony and Ryan could be a little family. Tyson had already gone and I could be next.
I put my knuckles on the window next to Mum’s till.
‘Me and you for keeps,’ I said.
She didn’t hear me but it didn’t matter. If you say it out loud, it still works.
‘I thought you’d gone home to bed, you’ve been gone so long,’ said Jean when I got to the embankment.
‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘I went home to get my sketchpad.’
‘You’ll have to be quick. I want to make sure I get a bed at the hostel tonight. My back is playing up something rotten.’
I asked Jean a few things about the mystery man before I started drawing.
‘Does he look like anyone famous?’
‘George Clooney,’ said Jean. But she was being daft.
When you draw someone’s face, I told her, you have to think about what’s underneath the skin. Their bones.
‘Sounds horrible,’ said Jean.
It was like putting a tent up without poles if you didn’t work out how the bones looked underneath.
Miss Crane called it ‘bone structure’.
When Lowry painted self-portraits, he always did them with mad, staring, red eyes. Tony has eyes like that all the time now too.
‘He was thin,’ said Jean. ‘Like him that played Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.’
‘Johnny Depp,’ I said.
‘Only not good-looking like that but his beard was similar.’ Jean nodded. ‘He had bad teeth and his hair was brown, not black.’
Jean was remembering lots of good details.