by Kim Slater
‘It’s all right,’ said Tony, laughing. ‘It’s only Steph’s mongo son.’
The man grunted and let me go. My throat was killing me.
The man’s face was covered in whiskers and he had a black beanie hat on. He turned to go back through the gate, and that’s when I saw it. A scar, running down from his left eyebrow to the middle of his cheek.
‘What are you staring at?’ said Tony, clenching his teeth. ‘Get in the house and up to your room, you little freak.’
I didn’t want to go back inside. I wanted to wait out here until the man left.
Tony pushed me hard towards the kitchen door.
I went in and stood in the hallway. Ryan was playing on his Xbox. He was smoking one of Tony’s smelly cigarettes and looked half asleep.
I felt sick and excited at the same time, but mostly sick.
I couldn’t hear the exact words Tony and the man were saying, but I heard odd bits like ‘It’s top quality’ and ‘Let me see the cash’.
I heard the man say, ‘See you next week.’
Then Tony shut the back door.
I jumped into the understairs cupboard and shut the door. I went right to the back and hid under the old coats.
Tony came into the hall and I heard his footsteps stop.
My throat was so dry it made me want to cough. Then my breathing started to go funny, like when I need my inhaler.
The cupboard door opened. Tony pulled the carpet up. He lifted up a sheet of wood and put his toolbox in. He put the other stuff back.
If he looked at the back of the cupboard and saw me, he would go barmy and hit me hard on my head.
The noise of Ryan’s gunshots got even louder and then went back to normal volume. Tony must have gone into the living room and closed the door again.
I stayed in the cupboard for another few minutes, just in case.
I’ve seen loads of films where the hero is tricked because the baddie pretends to go away, but really they are still standing right outside.
After a minute, I pushed open the cupboard door a tiny millimetre, which is the smallest stick on our school rulers. Then another, and another, until I could see that Tony really had gone back into the living room.
I climbed out of the cupboard and slipped out of the kitchen door. Then I ran down the alleyway to the end of the street. My breath was raspy and I felt for my inhaler in my pocket as I ran.
At the bottom of the street I stopped and took a puff. I looked left and right, but there was nobody but a man and his dog across the road.
Then I saw movement at the corner of Clipper Road as someone turned the corner and disappeared.
I ran down towards the corner. My chest felt tight, like guitar strings that were going to snap at any second.
If I didn’t have enough breath, my legs would just give way and I’d never catch the man. I stopped again and had another puff of my inhaler
I turned into Clipper Road and saw him up ahead. He’d stopped to light a cigarette. I stayed where I was until he started walking again.
This wasn’t pretend any more. I was actually trailing the killer. He might turn round at any second and see me. He could run back and stick me in the ribs or he might have a gun. There would be no witnesses.
I hung back a bit more and tried to stay in the shadows. Every time I got to a street light, I ran past it into the next dark patch of night, my heart pounding like a hammer in my chest. It was exactly like being in Mission: Impossible.
We got to the edge of the estate where it opens out on to the embankment. He stood still for a minute, then walked over to the trees where I’d been earlier. He was finishing his cigarette, looking out across the river.
He ground the stub under his foot and turned around. I was standing well back from the corner of the estate, next to a dark hedge where there was no street light. I knew all the smart tricks of surveillance.
He walked back over the road and turned right to where the flats were.
If he went into one of the blocks of flats, it would be very difficult to follow him without my cover being blown.
But he didn’t. He walked past the flats and into the little dead-end road where the student bedsits were. Each house was split up into four bedsits, two upstairs and two down. They all had their own doors, with concrete stairs running up the side to the first floor ones.
I stayed at the corner of the road in the shadows and watched. He went down the path of the third house, ground floor.
He disappeared inside and the light came on.
The curtains were thin and patterned. They were closed.
I walked up the street, and stood across from the house.
I couldn’t see him, but I could see his shadow and his movements through them.
The garden was full of rubbish and the path down the side of the house was dark and scary-looking.
It was the perfect house for a killer to hide in.
When I got back home, Mum was in the kitchen.
‘Where have you been?’ she asked.
‘I came to look for you at the shop,’ I said.
I didn’t feel bad about telling a little white lie. Sometimes you have to protect innocent people when you are investigating a crime.
Tony walked into the kitchen. He made a zipping-up-his-mouth action behind Mum’s back. He meant about Scarf ace grabbing hold of me. He got a lager out of the fridge and went back to the living room.
I moved nearer to Mum. She was making cheese sandwiches.
‘I saw the hostel security guard down at the embankment before he spoke to you,’ I said. ‘Did he know Colin, the man that died?’
She dropped the knife she was using and her eyes shot to the doorway. She was scared Tony would hear.
‘I’ve told you,’ she hissed. ‘Keep away from Stephen.’
‘Why, is he dangerous? What do you know about him?’
Mum put her face in her hands and shook her head.
‘This is a nightmare,’ she muttered to herself. Her hands dropped away and she looked at me. ‘Please, Kieran, forget it for now and I promise, when the time is right, I’ll tell you everything.’
Mum’s reply made me even more keen to uncover the truth.
What was the everything that she was going to tell me about?
Mum said to take my sandwich and my glass of milk up to my room. I didn’t mind being on my own. I had lots of work to do to progress the investigation.
That is the official thing you say when stuff is happening all of a sudden and you have to get your act together.
First, I wrote everything down in my notebook. Then I drew a sketch of the man with the scar in his beanie hat and a close-up of Stephen’s features.
Jean had done a good job of describing Scarface. My first photofit of him was a very good resemblance. In real life, he was much scruffier and his scar looked even bigger.
Next, I sketched the bedsit where Scarface lived. I drew the rubbish in the garden and everything. You have to make it look exactly like the actual scene, or you might miss some important evidence.
There was nothing else to do after that but get into bed and try to go to sleep.
My body felt tired but my mind was still awake and jumping around like a mad monkey.
My thoughts raced round in my head like they were on a track.
Round and round. The killer. Round and round. Stephen. Grandma. Round and round. Tony hurting my mum . . .
I was asleep when my eyes just opened on their own and snapped me wide awake again. I pressed the little light on my watch, which I keep by my bed at night. It was 3.04 a.m.
I could hear voices outside my bedroom window. I got out of bed and sneaked a look through the curtains. There were two men in hoodies standing outside our gate.
They kept looking towards the house and then talking together, like they were deciding whether to do something.
I felt panicky inside. I wondered whether to wake up Mum and Tony. What if the men had guns and crept in? They
might shoot Tony and Ryan while they were still asleep. I wouldn’t mind this, but if they did that then they would probably shoot me and Mum too.
Tony had done the zipping-up thing to his mouth. That meant, no matter what I saw, I had to keep shtum.
I got out of bed and opened my bedroom door a tiny bit.
There was a knock at the kitchen door. My heart nearly jumped out of my mouth. Boom, boom, boom it went, sounding much louder than in the daytime.
I heard Mum’s bedroom door open. I saw Tony come out, in just his tracky bottoms. He was holding a baseball bat.
He crept downstairs while Mum peeked through the bedroom door, holding her dressing gown together and shivering.
‘Who is it?’ I said.
‘I don’t know.’ Mum’s eyes were big and black in her face, where her eye make-up was all smudged.
‘Go back to bed,’ she whispered. ‘Tony’s sorting it out.’ She closed her door again.
I didn’t get back into bed. I stayed at the door, to listen. I heard Tony turn the key in the kitchen-door lock.
I waited to hear the shouting and screaming when Tony hit the men round the head with his bat.
‘What time do you call this?’ Tony said.
Another voice, speaking low.
‘I don’t give a bleep whether you’re desperate,’ said Tony. ‘I told you never to come here after eight.’
More voices and rustling about. I heard him go into the understairs cupboard. Then Tony came back upstairs.
I closed my door quickly.
He went back into his bedroom. After two minutes, Mum and Tony started arguing.
I didn’t pray any more that they’d stop, because it never worked.
‘What are you up to?’ I heard Mum wail. ‘I don’t want any trouble here, Tony.’
There was some banging about and then Mum started crying.
I put rolled-up tissue in my ears and the pillow over my head but I could still hear it.
Don’t let him hurt my mum. Don’t let him hurt my mum.
Saying it made me feel like I was doing something.
Even as I said the words, I knew he had already hurt her.
She always cried afterwards but she never got mad back.
I woke at the usual time, even though I’d been awake for ages in the night.
This is because every human has a special clock inbuilt into their brain. Even if you don’t put your alarm on, your body clock will still wake you up.
The proper scientific words for the body clock are ‘circadian rhythm’.
It’s not just humans that have it. Plants and other mammals have one too. It’s to do with light, and scientists have found it only works in Arctic animals when there are sunrises and sunsets. So, really, it is to do with the sun.
When the army want to get information out of suspects, they blindfold them. After a bit, the prisoners don’t know whether it is light or dark and their biological clock switches off. Then they get all confused and don’t know what time it is and tell them the truth about what really happened.
The army can get away with more stuff than the police. The police are not allowed to do things like that to get information out of people, even if they know they did the crime.
If a policeman shoots a man with a gun who has hurt people, there still has to be an investigation to see if the policeman did the right thing. It’s mad.
My biological clock was very good; I never needed the alarm to wake up. Ryan’s was rubbish; he never woke up until nearly dinner-time.
There’s hardly anything that scientists don’t know or can’t find out. But they don’t know every single thing in the world. They don’t believe in things unless they can see them or measure them with equations and stuff.
There are lots of important things that scientists don’t understand and can’t measure. Like how much people love each other, or where love comes from. Or where it goes when people stop loving each other. And what causes gut feelings when you are solving a crime.
There are no experiments to prove these things exist, but they are still real, even though I’m not sure about the love thing. Sometimes, you just have to say it to your mum and grandma to keep them happy.
Lowry knew more about feelings than any scientist, even Albert Einstein.
He didn’t need experiments to prove stuff.
He just painted pictures with five colours and made a feeling.
When you look at his paintings, they make your heart ache.
The house was very quiet.
It was the best thing about being the only one up, early in the morning. Mum wasn’t crying; Tony wasn’t shouting; Ryan’s Xbox wasn’t blasting out.
Today would be a good day.
It was the day I was going to see Grandma again, and soon everything would be back to normal.
I sat on my bed and looked through my notebook. My evidence notes were neat and organized. It gave me confidence that the crime would definitely be solved.
I packed it in my satchel, together with my sketchpad. I put my photograph and letter from Martin Brunt in there too, to show Grandma. It would cheer her up.
I emptied out the last few coins from my piggy bank and put them in my pocket with the three pounds Mum had given me.
Before I left the house, I wrapped up some biscuits and a couple of slices of bread in some kitchen roll, and put them in my satchel for later. I searched around for a pen, as I’d left mine in my bedroom.
There wasn’t one in the kitchen drawer or on the side.
I peered into Mum’s handbag on the worktop and reached for a pen that I could see was lodged down the side.
As I pulled it out, a birthday card was half pulled out too. There were three or four others behind it. Two had racing cars on, the others had pictures of balloons and cakes.
I opened the first card. Then I looked at the others.
They all said the same thing.
TO KIERAN,
HAPPY BIRTHDAY,
LOVE, UNCLE STEPHEN X
My tongue felt swollen and dry.
It was crazy. I hadn’t got an Uncle Stephen. And why would Mum keep old cards in her handbag like that?
I took one of the cards and slipped it inside my satchel. I don’t know why I did it, but it wasn’t dishonest because the cards were all written to me.
I unlocked the kitchen door and stepped out into the yard. The sun was shining and the sky was blue. It was still very cold.
I stood with my face up to the sun to let it warm me, as if I was a lizard.
The birds were chirping and I had all my stuff to show Grandma.
It felt brilliant.
It was still too early to go to school, so I walked down to the embankment and sat on the bench for a bit, looking at the river. The water was rippling and dancing about in the sunshine.
The coots were diving like crazy. The little white teardrops on their heads never got dirty, no matter what they did.
The Canada geese were showing off but I still liked them. They flew fast, just above the water, then they skidded down to a stop. All the other birds had to get out of the way.
You can tell the Canada geese think they’re it, because they all swim together in a gang and stick their beaks in the air.
I looked up when a jogger came by.
‘Morning,’ he said.
‘Morning,’ I said.
I didn’t even know him, but it made me feel nice to say it back. I liked early-morning people more than late-night ones.
I took the birthday card out and looked at it a couple of times. I only knew one man called Stephen and that was – Stop it! my mind screamed. It’s crazy.
I had to concentrate on getting to see Grandma and solving Colin’s murder.
‘You seem in a good mood today, Kieran,’ Miss Crane said, just before break.
I smiled at her but I didn’t tell her why.
I even liked the lessons today. We had Literacy first. We had to be one of the characters in Lord of the
Flies and pretend to be on the island.
I chose to be Piggy. In my story, I found a special tonic made by a witch doctor on the island. I drank it and it made me strong and brave and I didn’t need glasses any more.
I hunted down all the boys who had been horrible to me. The other boys wanted me to be the leader so I said yes. We captured Jack and Ralph, who are the bully boys in the book, and put them in a cage like the one the RSPCA men put Tyson in.
We gave them just enough food and water to keep them alive while we decided what to do with them.
Miss Crane told me to stop because it was break-time, so I didn’t have time to get to the good bit where we started sticking them with spears.
That’s how quickly the time goes when you get wrapped up in writing.
After break, it was Art. I finished my seascape and Mrs Bentley rolled it up for me and put an elastic band round it.
Miss Crane said she would collect it for me before the end of school so I could take it home.
I was going to take it with me to the hospital, to give Grandma. She could put it up in her house when she got it back. All the pieces were fitting together.
Karwana hadn’t come to school, so I couldn’t stand with him at dinner-time.
There was a computer free in the library and I got to go on it. I found the full address of the hospital on a website and wrote it down.
In the afternoon, we had French and PHSE. I pronounced all the French words correctly.
I put my hand up in PHSE when the teacher asked if anyone had ever been offered drugs, because I had. Under the bridge, once, when we first moved to the Meadows.
Some of the others in the class were laughing like they didn’t believe I was telling the truth. They wouldn’t laugh if they knew about Scarface and the murder.
As soon as the bell went, I grabbed my satchel and pushed my chair back.
‘Someone’s in a rush today,’ said Miss Crane.
I walked/ran all the way down to the embankment. I didn’t even need my inhaler.
I hoped Jean was ready to go. We could get on the bus to Mansfield that went past the Castle Marina Retail Park.
I’d just got to the trees when I saw two people fighting down on the riverbank. I watched as the tallest one got the other person round the neck and hit their head.