by Robert Edric
No one spoke for a moment.
‘Can you even write?’ Devlin said then.
‘What’s that got to do with anything?’ the boy said.
‘You said a written complaint. My bet is, you can’t even write, let alone read.’
‘So what? I’ll get someone to do it for me. A written complaint’s more official. Write something down and they take notice. I got the right of appeal against every decision the fucking Juvenile Board have ever made.’
‘Of course you have,’ Patrick said. ‘And look how far that’s got you.’
The boy seemed to sag where he sat.
There was a further long silence.
Outside, the light sleet of earlier thickened and turned briefly to snow.
‘You going to put me out in this?’ the boy said.
‘What’s your name?’ Maria asked him.
‘Billy Egan.’
‘We don’t owe you any favours,’ Patrick said. ‘Like I already told you, all you are to us is trouble.’
‘Put me out in this and the next thing you know the coppers will have pulled me in and then they’ll start asking me questions about where I’ve been, who’s been hiding and feeding me.’ He picked up the last of the bread and pressed it into pieces with his dirty fingers.
Devlin watched him eat. ‘What you said about Sullivan,’ he said.
‘What about him? Him and his big mouth, or him and the fact that his own days are numbered at the place?’
‘That.’
‘It’s no big secret. They reckon the Governor himself has already had his marching orders. Once he’s gone, Sullivan and all the others like him will go too. They might even turn the place into a real prison.’
‘They’ve been saying that ever since the war,’ Colm said.
Egan shrugged. ‘All I know is what I see and hear.’ He looked back at Devlin. ‘What, Sullivan reckons he can do you a favour, does he? You want to steer well clear of that. There’s even talk of an official inquiry into how the place is being run now. They put up pictures of the new Queen. Anybody who wanted one could have one for their dormitory or cell. You can imagine how that went down.’
Devlin had said little to Maria about his failed, pointless interview, even less to Patrick and Colm.
‘You say one word to anybody about being here and you’ll need more than your fingers turned into guns to save you,’ Patrick said. Then he pulled on Colm’s sleeve and the pair of them left.
30
LESS THAN AN hour passed before the police arrived looking for Egan.
Patrick and Colm had gone to their own caravan, returned soon after with extra clothing and blankets, and had taken the boy back to where they’d found him in the dismantled carousel. Patrick had decided that the best thing to do now was to hide him until they could take him out of the compound and deliver him to Norwich station. It was too dangerous to kick him out and then let him wander nearby until he was either found or gave himself up before he froze to death.
The police car stopped at the field entrance and two men got out and went from trailer to trailer asking questions. Most of the trailers were unoccupied and they made swift progress in the failing light.
They came to where Devlin and Maria awaited them.
‘We need to have a quick shufti inside,’ one of the men said to them.
‘Why?’
‘Routine. We’re looking for a runaway, an absconder. The North Sea Camp. Bane of our bloody existence, that place.’
Maria told them to come in.
At the table, Devlin picked up the last of the bread and started eating it. He sat with Egan’s mug in his hand.
The two men came in and looked around them. ‘To be honest, we’re doing you a favour. The last thing you want is that particular nasty little piece of work turning up on your doorstep. William Thomas Egan, he’s called.’
William Thomas. Devlin doubted if the boy had ever been called that outside of a courtroom or a police station.
‘How long’s he been gone?’ Devlin said.
The men exchanged a glance. ‘Too long. Truth be known, we should have started looking a lot sooner, but word was that he’d gone straight to London. They’ve been keeping an eye out down there for the past week. But apparently he’s still in the neighbourhood.’
The two men made a cursory search.
‘Perhaps he’s hiding under the sink,’ Maria said.
Both men laughed, and then one of them went to check. ‘He’s definitely not there,’ he said. It was clear they considered even this small effort a waste of their time.
Devlin indicated the falling darkness and snow. ‘You’ve got a lot of mud to wade through if you want to make a thorough search of the place.’
‘We should have been off duty an hour ago,’ one of them said, sitting beside Devlin. ‘Been up since five this morning, we both have.’
‘Middle of the night round here,’ Devlin said.
All the two men wanted to do was to write up their time sheets, work out their overtime, say they’d searched the place and go home.
Maria put a bottle and four glasses on the table and the policemen silently accepted her offer.
‘We usually pick them up in one of the nearby pubs,’ one of them said. ‘That’s where we should be looking.’
‘Somewhere nice and warm.’
‘Precisely.’
‘What’s he in for?’ Maria asked them, feigning a lack of concern.
‘They never tell us that. Not officially, at least. But take it from me, this little sod’s got more than his fair share of black marks against him. “A Danger to the Public”, they call it.’
‘Meaning?’
‘Meaning, like I said, you’d be well advised to steer clear of the slippery little bastard until we pick him up. The Chief Constable’s getting angry at the time we’re taking. We’ll have him before long.’ He pulled aside the lace curtain and looked out at the half-drowned, half-frozen compound.
The other man drained his glass and took out his notebook. ‘And you are?’ he said to Maria.
She told him.
‘We just spoke to your brothers, that right?’
‘They have the van over there.’
‘So that makes you Jimmy Devlin.’
‘That’s me.’ He waited, hardly breathing, for what the police-man might say next, but the name meant nothing to him and he closed his book and slid it back into his pocket.
‘What do you think?’ the man said to his companion.
And again Devlin waited.
‘It makes sense that the little bastard would want to put some distance between the camp and himself,’ the other man said. ‘We already know that his family won’t have anything to do with him. Two and a half years and not a single visit. Makes you wonder.’
‘Once he got to Peterborough,’ Maria said, ‘another hour and a half and he’d be in London.’
‘That was the general consensus at the station. The so-called local sighting was bad info. Besides, they’re keeping a close watch on Peterborough, so if he does decide to show up there …’
Devlin saw what Maria had done.
‘And if he doesn’t?’ he said.
‘Who knows? To be honest, we get sick and tired of clearing up after that lot at the borstal. The place is a disgrace, a law unto itself.’
Maria tapped their empty glasses with the bottle she still held.
The two men finally took off their helmets and put them on the table.
‘This five o’clock thing,’ one of them said. ‘New kid, see? Up all night, most nights.’
‘I can imagine.’
‘And I’m already half asleep before I get back through the door at the end of the day.’
‘Change the record,’ his colleague said good-naturedly.
The four of them drank a toast to the newborn child.
‘It looks like you’ve had a wasted journey,’ Maria said to the men.
‘Tell me about it,’ the new father said,
draining his glass and then stretching his arms and yawning.
31
DEVLIN WENT TO find Billy Egan the following morning. Another frozen night had passed and he felt the cold air deep in his chest as he walked.
He found the boy swaddled in blankets behind a stack of pallets inside the sheeted carousel. Devlin nudged him with his foot and then kicked harder. There was still no response, and it occurred to Devlin that the boy might have died in the night.
A further kick and Egan groaned and half turned, rubbed his face on his sleeve and looked up at Devlin.
‘What time is it?’
‘I’ve come to hand you over to the police,’ Devlin said. ‘And then collect the thousand-pound reward on your head.’
Egan laughed. ‘You brought anything for me to eat? I’m still starving.’
‘You should have stayed where you were, then.’
Egan sat up and pulled the blankets close to him. ‘You ever been in a place like that?’
Devlin shook his head.
‘Thought not. If you had, you’d know why I’m not going back. Whatever Sullivan might or might not have told you about me, there’s worse things happen in there than any of us ever got up to on the outside.’
‘I’ll take your word for that,’ Devlin said.
‘You do that.’ Egan rose to his feet, rubbing his arms and legs. With his dishevelled hair and clothing he looked younger than his age.
‘They want you gone,’ Devlin said.
‘The gyppos? They made that clear enough. What you listening to them for?’
‘The police were here. They could easily have said something. We all could.’
Egan laughed and then started coughing, unable to regain his breath for a full minute. He stood with his hands on his knees for a few seconds and then spat heavily. ‘Not that lot,’ he said. ‘Common knowledge that a gyppo wouldn’t give the law the shit off his arse. Turn me in? More trouble than it’s worth.’
‘Just like you are to them,’ Devlin said.
Egan brushed sawdust from his shins, making little difference to his overall appearance. ‘Faster I’m out of this dump the better. What’s the plan?’
‘I’m taking you to Norwich station.’
‘Got no money.’
‘Not my problem. What were you going to do, walk all the way to Mayfair?’
‘I hadn’t given it much thought. Where’s Mayfair?’
‘Have you got people in London you can go to?’
‘People?’
‘Friends, other boys.’
‘Not really. I was just going to see what turned up. Something usually does.’
The boy couldn’t have been more than thirteen or fourteen when he’d been sentenced.
‘Family?’ Devlin said.
‘Them? First thing they’d do is call the coppers to come and get me. I’d rather take my chances as I am than turn up at any of their doors.’ He licked his palm and wiped his face, running his hand through his cropped hair.
‘Sullivan told me,’ Devlin said. ‘What you were in for.’
The boy considered this. ‘It wasn’t half what they said it was.’
‘It was still your sister.’
‘So? It was more her than me. She’s a proper little tart. Moved to Lynn. It’s what she does. Sullivan probably told you she was a kid, did he? Nothing like. People need to get their facts straight. Got any of your own?’
‘Any what?’
‘Sisters.’
‘It’s just me,’ Devlin said.
‘Best way to be,’ Egan said. ‘Look out for yourself and nobody else, that’s my motto. Will they feed me before they kick me out, do you think?’
‘I doubt it. Why should they?’
‘Same reason I should keep my mouth shut about where I’ve been if the law ever does catch up with me.’
Devlin shook his head at the boy’s bravado. ‘I’ll see what I can find,’ he said. ‘You still set on London?’
‘Where else is there? You think I’m going to rot in this backward neck of the woods and go nowhere? It’s a fresh start, London. So what if I don’t know anybody? At least nobody there knows me. I’ll probably even change my name.’
Devlin could see the sense of all this in the boy’s head.
‘Can we get going? Sooner the better, as far as I’m concerned.’
Devlin left him and returned twenty minutes later with bread and ham. Egan ate half of this the moment it was in his hands; the rest he put into a canvas satchel.
‘You got any possessions?’ Devlin asked him.
‘I’m travelling light,’ the boy said. He studied Devlin for a moment. ‘You know what?’ he said.
‘What?’
‘You should pack your own bag and come with me. London. You and me.’
‘I’m twenty-nine,’ Devlin said.
‘What’s that got to do with anything?’
Two hours later, Devlin sat in the car park at Norwich station and watched Egan cross the road and the forecourt and then disappear into the darkness of the entrance. He’d given the boy money for a ticket, but doubted if he’d buy one. It was all the money Devlin had possessed, unable to ask either the brothers or Maria for more. All that mattered to them now was that the boy was gone and that no trails led back to them. The instant Egan disappeared, Devlin wished him luck, but doubted if this was what he needed. The next any of them would hear of him, he imagined, would be another newspaper headline, everything one day, nothing the next.
He was a stranger in the city, and having waited to make sure the boy didn’t come back out, he plotted his return along the main road to the west. The lorry was playing up in the cold weather, stalling when he stopped and then either drying up or flooding on him when he tried to get it going again.
32
THE NEXT DAY a man shouted from the far side of the compound, close to where the larger rides stood boarded up, some already dismantled and scattered over the sodden ground. The patches of settled snow gave everything an air of abandonment and loss.
Maria went to the window and looked out, careful not to reveal herself.
A second man appeared and went to the first and both continued shouting, their hands cupped to their mouths.
Devlin went to stand beside her. ‘Recognize them?’
Maria shook her head. ‘Two guesses who they’re looking for, though.’
Patrick and Colm had left earlier in the day, before Devlin was awake. As the days passed and the weather worsened, the brothers involved him less and less in their dealings. There was little enough profit in it for the pair of them, they insisted.
As they watched unseen, a woman emerged from one of the trailers and went to the men. When she reached them, one of them grabbed her arm and shook her and she was forced to pull herself free, almost falling. The second man gave her something and the woman pointed to Patrick and Colm’s empty caravan. Then she turned and pointed to where Devlin and Maria stood and watched.
The two men crossed the open ground, avoiding the worst of the ruts and mud. Devlin watched them come but recognized neither of them. They were both his own age and both wore overalls.
‘Whoever they are, they’re not happy,’ Maria said.
The men went to the empty caravan and walked around it, banging on its sides and looking in at every window.
‘What do you want to do?’ Maria asked Devlin. ‘They’ll know fast enough that we’re in here.’ A good kick would open even the locked door.
‘Act dumb,’ Devlin said. ‘At least until we know what they want.’ He sat back at the table and waited.
The men knocked and shouted and Maria went to the door.
‘You McGuire?’ one of the men shouted over Maria’s shoulder at Devlin, trying to push past her.
‘You’ve got the wrong van. Theirs is over there.’
‘We know that much, smart-arse.’
Both men came inside and closed the door behind them.
‘Who are you looking for?’ Maria
said. ‘There are lots of McGuires.’
‘You must have heard us shouting.’
‘We were asleep,’ Devlin said. He motioned to the unmade bed.
‘The McGuire brothers. That’s all we know,’ the first man said. He had a damaged lip, split and healed, a waxy scar, and this affected his speech.
‘If they’re not in their van, then we don’t know where they are,’ Maria said.
‘Don’t come the innocent with us.’
‘Have it your own way.’
‘What do you want with them?’ Devlin said, pretending to yawn.
‘What we want is to get our hands on the thieving bastards who took our sacks from the river, that’s what we want.’
Fishermen.
‘What sacks?’ Maria said. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘The sacks that pair hauled out of the storage jetty a fortnight back.’
‘How do you know it was the McGuires?’ Devlin said.
‘Because somebody told us, that’s how,’ the man with the scarred lip said.
‘And we’re here to find out one way or another.’ The second man looked hard at Devlin as he spoke. ‘And if we find out that either of you two had anything to do with it, then you’ll get the same as what’s coming to them.’
‘They’re a law unto themselves, that pair,’ Maria said. ‘They’re gone for days on end sometimes.’
‘And I’m supposed to take your word for that, am I?’ the man said.
‘Suit yourself,’ Maria told him.
‘Gyppos,’ the man with the lip said. ‘They’re all the same. Ray Duggan warned us we’d have to watch our backs with this pair.’
‘Who’s he when he’s at home?’ Devlin said, waiting for the smallest sign that he’d said too much.
‘He’s the one who pointed us in this direction. We thought at first that he was involved himself – he usually is, one way or another – but he swore blind it was nothing to do with him and then suggested a few likely candidates.’
‘And so here we are,’ the other said, rubbing his hands together.
‘Perhaps he was lying to you,’ Devlin said. ‘Pointing you anywhere except at himself.’