The Child Who

by Simon Lelic

  Keep your cool. The words, briefly, tethered him. But when Blake turned; when he spotted Leo and smiled – smiled, as though genuinely pleased to see him – Leo felt his fury snap its leash.

  He surged. He felt a touch on his shoulder – a flailing grip – but he was free of it and past the table and through a chair and falling against his cowering prey. He seized Blake’s throat. He pressed him to the wall. He smelt sweat and soured smoke and the scent was like a taste of blood.

  ‘Where’s my daughter!’ He squeezed and Blake’s eyes bulged. ‘Where is she! If you’ve hurt her I swear to God I’ll…’

  A hand on each arm: rough, strong, prising at his grip and wrenching it away. Another set around his middle, yanking until Leo tumbled. He searched for Blake’s face but saw only the constable’s, the inspector’s, and felt himself hurled against something solid. He cracked his head. He barely noticed. He tried to push himself forwards but there was a weight across his chest that pinned him: a forearm, the size of Leo’s lower leg.

  ‘Mr Curtice!’ DI Mathers appeared around his colleague’s shoulder. Their faces were in Leo’s, blocking his view of the coward in the corner. ‘Look at me. Look at me!’ Leo, reluctantly, allowed his focus to settle. He saw Mathers growling. ‘I said cool, didn’t I? I said we needed to keep our cool!’

  Leo jerked. The constable held him still.

  ‘Okay!’ Leo struggled again but less forcefully. The policemen were a wall in front of him and he would have said anything to get a glimpse of the man beyond. ‘Okay,’ he repeated and this time Leo held the inspector’s eye. Gradually the pressure across his chest began to ease. The constable drew back. The inspector, though, held his ground.

  ‘Cool!’ He showed Leo a finger. ‘Got it?’

  Leo nodded. He shifted and there he was: Daniel’s stepfather, his cigarette packet crumpled at his feet and his nicotine-stained fingers massaging his throat. The man coughed. He hacked and he spat. He glared at Leo and Leo glared back.

  ‘Sit,’ said the DI. ‘Both of you.’ He dragged Leo towards a chair. The constable, less tenderly, assisted Blake.

  ‘Hey!’ Blake resisted but the policeman shoved him down, then slid the chair so Blake’s stomach impacted against the table. He took up position at Blake’s shoulder. Leo sensed the DI looming over his.

  ‘I could do you, you know,’ said Blake, spluttering. ‘Him and you both.’ He jabbed a thumb at Leo but spoke across his shoulder to the PC. ‘That’s assault. So much as touch me again and I’ll have you for ABH.’

  The policeman said nothing. He stared at the opposite wall.

  ‘Settle down, Mr Blake,’ said Mathers. ‘I don’t think you really want to broach the subject of formal charges just yet, do you?’

  Blake faced them. He glowered.

  ‘Now. The matter in hand. We’re listening. Mr Curtice here: he’s listening.’

  Blake, tentatively, moved his gaze to meet Leo’s. He licked his lips. He made a motion to lean forward but, catching something in Leo’s expression, changed his mind. He propped his elbows on the surface and spread his fingers.

  ‘Curtice,’ Blake said. ‘Leo.’ He wetted his lips again. ‘I sent the notes. Okay? I admit it. But this business with your daughter… I swear to you I had nothing to do with it.’

  Leo made no movement.

  ‘Please,’ said Blake and this time he did lean forward. ‘You need to tell them. You need to convince them I’m telling the truth. Because they won’t listen. They just won’t. I mean, you know what they’re like, right? You have to deal with them all the time. Right?’

  Leo twitched and Blake flinched. Mathers, at Leo’s shoulder, edged closer.

  ‘Where is she?’ Leo’s voice, in his head, sounded distant. It seemed steady, under control, when Leo felt anything but. ‘Blake,’ he said. ‘I helped you. I helped Daniel, your family. Please. Just tell me where my daughter is.’

  Blake was shaking his head as Leo spoke. ‘Listen to me. Please. You’re not—’

  Leo held up a hand. ‘Even if she’s…’ Leo registered the horror spreading on Vincent Blake’s face. ‘You just need to tell us. Now.’ He had intended to sound intimidating. On the final word, however, Leo’s voice cracked.

  There was silence. Leo, the men around him, watched Blake. Blake looked at each of them in turn, as though willing for someone in the room to admit the joke. He focused on Leo.

  ‘Curtice. This is me!’ He pressed his fingers to the faded logo on his sweater. ‘You know me,’ Blake was saying. ‘You know my family. You said it yourself. You were trying to help us! Why would you help us if you didn’t trust us?’

  ‘Not you,’ Leo hissed. ‘Never you!’

  Blake shook his head. ‘I admitted it. Didn’t I? I wrote the notes. But that’s all. Honest! That’s all I did!’ He checked around again in desperation. ‘Okay,’ he said, and splayed his hands again. ‘Maybe I sent a mate of mine round to your house and all. But he didn’t do anything, did he? Gave your wife a bit of a scare but there was no harm done. Was there?’

  Leo sat motionless. The man with the beard. The man Megan saw. Leo had forgotten all about him.

  ‘I told him you owed me money,’ Blake was saying. ‘I said to him, throw a brick into your living room or something. But he couldn’t even manage that, could he?’ Blake reclined slightly and muttered, as though revisiting some lingering grievance. ‘Twenty-mill units, he tells me. Your double glazing. Says he took a proper look but a brick would have bounced right off. But if he’d done it right, if he’d chucked it at one of the corners…’ He raised his eyes, seemed to realise he owed the room an explanation. ‘Glazing’s my trade,’ he said. ‘Pat’s, too: my useless mate. It’s how I got this.’ He fingered his crooked nose, the scar across it. ‘Cash-in-hand job. Almost lost a bloody eye. At least I get my disability now but I should probably be claiming for the undercover work too.’ He tested the room with a smile. It faltered. ‘The beach,’ he explained to Leo. ‘The day I followed you. I mean, I was wrapped up pretty tightly so I’m assuming my ugly mug’s how you…’

  Leo made to cut him off and Blake held up his hands.

  ‘Whatever,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t matter. The point is, you’ve got me all wrong. The notes, the brick: I had my reasons. But that was it, Leo. Honest. That, for me, is where it stops.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why what?’

  ‘You said you had your reasons. What were they?’

  ‘What does it matter? I told you what I did. I told you what I didn’t do. It’s not helping your kid, keeping me here like this.’

  ‘You’re lying. You can’t explain, which means you’re lying!’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Where is she? Tell me where she is!’ Leo half rose from his chair. He felt a hand settle lightly on each of his shoulders.

  ‘Mr Blake,’ said DI Mathers. ‘You said you wanted to talk to Mr Curtice. So far you haven’t told him anything you haven’t already said to us.’

  Blake fiddled with something unseen. ‘No. Well. I said Curtice, didn’t I? I didn’t say you and Hulk Hogan over there too.’

  ‘Meaning what, Mr Blake?’

  ‘Meaning it’s none of your business!’

  ‘Mr Blake—’

  ‘Actually. You know what? I’m leaving. You’ve got no evidence. You haven’t charged me. You haven’t even arrested me!’ Blake stood and appeared surprised when the constable let him. He seemed to take heart – until the detective inspector cleared his throat.

  ‘Vincent Blake,’ he said. ‘I am arresting you on suspicion of murder.’

  Blake’s eyes stretched wide. ‘Wait a minute,’ he said. ‘There’s no need for—’

  ‘You do not have to say anything unless you wish to do so—’

  ‘Wait! Just wait a minute!’

  ‘– but it may harm your defence if you do not mention, when questioned—’

  ‘OKAY!’

  The room went quiet.

  ‘Okay,’ Blake said
again, more softly this time, as though wary of severing the silence. ‘Here,’ he said. ‘Look.’ He sat down. ‘I’m cooperating. Okay?’

  The inspector, at Leo’s side now, folded his arms.

  ‘But I’m not gonna say anything till we’re alone. Till you guarantee me nothing’s being recorded.’ Blake pointed at Leo. ‘And Curtice here,’ he said to Mathers, ‘is a solicitor. Which means I’m covered. Right? Leo? I’m covered, right?’

  Leo had no idea what logic was playing in the man’s head. ‘Right,’ he said.

  Mathers looked across the room towards his colleague. He considered Blake, then Leo, seated at the table. Then, with a grimace, he gestured for his junior to follow him out.

  ‘Hey,’ said Blake and the inspector, in the doorway, paused. Blake glanced warily at Leo. ‘Don’t go too far,’ he said.

  ‘Blake.’

  Daniel’s stepfather had slid from his chair the moment the policemen had left the room. He bent, gathered his cigarette packet, and bore the remains back to the table.

  ‘Blake!’

  Blake twitched.

  ‘Talk,’ Leo said. ‘Quickly. Your so-called reasons.’

  Blake set aside his plunder. He glanced over at the door and scanned the ceiling, as though to check they were not being monitored. ‘It wasn’t personal,’ Blake said. ‘Okay?’ He smiled. ‘I like you, Leo. Always did. So just remember that this had nothing to do with—’

  ‘I don’t care! All I care about is my daughter!’

  ‘Okay, okay.’ Blake shuffled. He edged his chair a little further from the table. ‘I’m just saying, that’s all. But you wanna know why, right? And that’s the problem, Leo. You were always banging on about why.’

  Leo felt his face crease.

  ‘Why this, why that. Wouldn’t shut up about the bloody trial.’ Blake sniffed another smile. ‘The why’s the why. Get it?’ He drew a cigarette from his pack.

  ‘The trial? You wrote the notes to put me off a trial?’ Leo watched Blake watching him through the flame of his lighter. ‘That doesn’t make sense. What difference would it have made to you if we’d gone to trial?’

  ‘What difference?’ Blake winced at the stupidity of the question.

  ‘A trial would have been about Daniel!’

  ‘Bollocks,’ said Blake, sputtering smoke. ‘It would’ve been about us. Me and Steph. Steph most of all. Why, right? You wanted everyone to find out why.’

  ‘For Daniel! For your stepson’s sake!’

  ‘Yeah, yeah. So you say.’

  ‘It’s true!’

  ‘So what if it is! Daniel wasn’t the only one with something at stake. Ask your shrink friend if you don’t believe me.’ Blake put on a voice. ‘Tell me about his past. Tell me about your past.’ He sneered, shook his head. ‘Dragging shit up is all she was doing. Looking for someone else to blame.’ Blake dragged, exhaled, dragged again. He threw the filter to the floor.

  Leo watched him. ‘We were right,’ he said. ‘Weren’t we?’

  Blake turned.

  ‘About the abuse. About what Daniel went through.’ Leo tightened his eyes. ‘You. You abused him.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Is that why you married her? Because she had a child? Someone you could get at whenever you—’

  ‘No!’ Blake stood. ‘I said, no! Okay?’

  Leo hesitated. ‘Who then? His father? His real father, I mean.’

  Blake, slowly, settled himself. He shrugged. ‘No. Maybe. I don’t know.’

  Leo waited.

  Blake looked and looked away. ‘There was a bloke,’ he told the floor. ‘One in particular. One of Steph’s friends.’ He spoke the word with disdain. ‘This was after Frank left her. She kind of… fell apart. Started drinking. Started seeing blokes. Started, you know. Being with them. It was how she “got by”,’ he added, as though mimicking – ridiculing – a phrase that, in private, had become a euphemism. I coped. Isn’t that how Stephanie had put it talking to Karen?

  ‘So this bloke. He was a regular, shall we say. Before my time. He’d show up, have his fun, then bugger off. In a week, a month, he’d be back again. For her, Steph thought. She always told herself he was coming back for her.’ Blake met Leo’s eye. Something passed between them. Even Blake, it seemed, could comprehend the horror of what Daniel would have suffered.

  ‘But that’s…’ Leo forced himself to focus on Ellie. ‘I mean, if it wasn’t you…’

  Blake made a face, like Leo was struggling to keep up. ‘It was Steph. Wasn’t it? She knew what was going on. She drank but she still knew. He turned up, she opened the door. You ask why and the answer points to her.’

  Leo made no sound. He swallowed. ‘No,’ he said at last. ‘Not necessarily. I mean, one could argue…’ He was not sure where the sentence was headed but Blake, anyway, cut it off.

  ‘It wasn’t just that.’ He leant in, studied his hands. ‘There was other stuff. When Daniel was a baby. Bad stuff, like…’ He glanced at Leo. ‘Bad stuff,’ he said.

  The hospital visits. The trips to A & E. The times Daniel almost died.

  Leo stared.

  ‘You read about it all the time,’ Blake said. ‘Someone gets done for something they did like a million years ago. Like the Nazis, the fucking Yids hunting them down. Not letting bygones be bygones.’

  Still Leo could say nothing.

  ‘She was wrong. She knows she was. I’m not trying to make out it was accidental or anything but… She was ill. Sick. She saw doctors, shrinks like your mate, but all they ever did was give her pills. When she got better it was on her own. With me.’ His voice, momentarily, conveyed pride. ‘But a trial. That would have been, what? Another year?’ He gave his head a sharp shake. ‘She couldn’t have handled it. She’s barely handling things as they are.’

  ‘Stephanie,’ said Leo. ‘Did she…’

  Blake’s head snapped up. ‘She doesn’t know. She didn’t. The notes, all that: it’s down to me. Okay?’ He looked around the room, as though speaking to whomever might be listening. ‘I wanna make that clear right now.’

  Leo, watching him, found himself struck. ‘You love her.’

  Blake seemed puzzled by his tone. ‘I married her,’ he said, as though that, surely, were evidence enough. ‘I’m not the hugs-and-flowers type but that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t do anything for her.’ His frown deepened. ‘You’re married, right? You know what it’s like. What kind of man lets something happen that he knows is gonna hurt his wife?’

  Leo, to that, could offer no answer.

  Blake took his silence as an accusation. ‘I know what you’re thinking,’ he said. ‘You’re thinking about the boy, that I screwed him over. I would have.’ Blake straightened his shoulders. ‘I’m not denying it. He’s the guilty one, right? And Steph’s better off without the little sod if you ask me. But it would have made no difference anyway. Would it?’ Blake paused but not long enough for Leo to reply. ‘Like I said, right at the start. If he’d pleaded not guilty it would’ve been a show trial. A publicity stunt. Guilty, not guilty: whichever way you played it, Daniel was always gonna end up on a plate.’

  The abuse. Maybe if they’d been able to prove Daniel was abused…

  But even that, Leo knew, would not have been enough. Nothing, short of madness, would have been enough.

  ‘I was right, wasn’t I?’ Blake said. ‘At least my way Steph was spared.’ He took another cigarette from his pack. ‘I mean, I’m sorry,’ he mumbled. ‘About the notes and that. Maybe, I dunno. Maybe I could have played it some other way.’ He did not, listening to himself, sound convinced.

  ‘You could have just said. About the trial. You could have insisted…’

  ‘I did insist!’ Blake glared at his failing lighter. ‘Fucking tried to anyway.’ He shook it and the lighter sparked.

  ‘But Daniel: Stephanie’s his mother, you’re his stepfather. You could have just told him…’

  Blake scoffed. ‘Tried that too. But there ain’t no telling Daniel. Me and
him, in case you hadn’t noticed, don’t exactly get along. He resents me, is what it is. Can’t handle the fact I’m cuddling his mummy.’ The cigarette was refusing to light. Blake plucked it from his lips and grimaced as he flicked it aside. ‘And as for her,’ he said. ‘She lets him do whatever he wants. That’s part of the problem, if you ask me: spoiling him like it’d make up for what happened in the past. And Danny boy: he said he liked you. Said he trusted you. Said he’d do what you told him to, which in the end meant that was that.’

  It was down to him. Once again it was all down to him.

  ‘I’m no expert,’ Blake was saying, ‘but something about it ain’t right. The boy’s twelve. Not even old enough to know what shaving foam’s for. But stick him in front of a jury and suddenly he’s the man in charge. That ain’t right. Surely? You’re the lawyer, you tell me. Is that right?’

  Leo could only shake his head. Once he started, though, he found he could not stop. ‘I don’t believe it,’ he said. ‘I don’t believe you. You sent the notes. You said you did.’

  ‘S’right. And I said I was sorry. They were only meant to rattle you, mate. Give you a nudge, that’s all.’

  ‘And my daughter’s hair? Her blood. What was that supposed to do?’

  ‘What? What are you talking about?’

  ‘I don’t deserve a daughter. Isn’t that how you put it? Explain the hair, Blake. Explain the blood!’ Leo was standing now, leaning towards Blake over the table.

  Blake tried to slide away his chair but its rear legs caught and the chair tilted. ‘Hey. Calm down. I honestly have no idea what you’re—’

  Leo was around the table and upon him. He gripped Blake’s collar and bore his weight as the chair beneath him fell away. ‘The note! The final note! It was written in Ellie’s blood! They tested it! They confirmed it! What’s your story for explaining that!’

  Blake stuttered. He shook his head. ‘Honestly! Leo! I haven’t got the foggiest—’

  ‘If you wrote one, you wrote them all! And you couldn’t have written that one unless… unless…’