Screen of Deceit

by Nick Oldham

  Jonny’s knees fastened Mark’s arms down and though he struggled he didn’t get anywhere because Eric dropped on to his legs and held them.

  Mark was beaten. He’d had a few moments of vengeful victory and now it was over.

  Jonny wiped the snot and spit off his face with the back of his hand and caught his breath. A swelling visibly rose around his right eye.

  Mark glared contemptuously at him, now unafraid, knowing he had the ability to beat him up on a one-to-one, without the two goons to protect him.

  ‘I’m gonna get you,’ Mark snarled.

  Jonny gave a cruel laugh, then lunged at Mark’s face and grabbed it in his right hand so that his fingers dug painfully into Mark’s cheek, his ragged nails cutting into the soft skin, distorting his face and mouth as he squeezed hard. There was a feral grimace on Jonny’s harsh, weasel face.

  ‘I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about, boyo, but you’re barking up the wrong tree here.’

  ‘Liar,’ Mark managed to say through his misshapen mouth. ‘You’re a dealer, you gave her the stuff.’

  ‘Lad,’ Jonny said, ‘you’re talking shit. I didn’t give her owt, got that?’ With that he smacked Mark’s head down on the ground. Mark braced himself for what was about to come – the biggest battering of his life. His eyes took in Sam and Eric itching to kick the shit out of him. But something incredible happened. ‘Now you just sod off and leave me alone, you mad twat,’ Jonny said, rising off his chest. ‘And consider yourself lucky we’re not gonna beat the living crap outta you, cos you well deserve it, Carter.’

  Jonny stood up, taking a step back to give the, metaphorical, gobsmacked Mark room to stand.

  ‘We’re not gonna kill the twat?’ Sam whined in dismay.

  ‘No, we’re not,’ Jonny said, wiping his face with his sleeve.

  ‘But why …?’ Sam continued.

  ‘Because we’re not, OK?’ Jonny said, infuriated at being questioned by a lesser mortal.

  ‘What?’ Sam sneered, not getting this at all. ‘Dun’t make sense.’

  Mark clambered to his feet. Surely this was a wind up. Jonny Sparks letting him go?

  ‘Now piss off,’ Jonny spat, ‘before I change my mind.’ Mark hesitated, was about to ask why, too. ‘Just ’effin’ go.’

  Mark turned to get his bike – but didn’t get chance to go anywhere.

  Before he knew what was happening, the four lads were surrounded. Four vehicles screamed on to the car park, tyres screeching, engines revving, and screeched to a halt around them. Two were marked police cars, their blue lights flashing, one was a police van and the other was a plain car. Like well-drilled ants, six uniformed cops shot out of the vehicles shouting like mad men (even the woman) and with a blur of speed, the four lads were slammed face down on the ground, hands pulled behind their backs and handcuffed painfully. They all demanded to know what was going on.

  Mark was pinned face down by a uniformed cop, his face crushed into the gravel.

  Jonny had the same, but was heaved to his feet by a burly cop, whilst Sam and Eric were held down like Mark.

  Mark twisted his head and saw two plain-clothed cops getting out of the unmarked car, the uniformed lot obviously having done the dirty work for the detectives. Mark instantly recognized DCI Christie. He took a moment to work out where he’d seen Christie’s colleague – then it hit him: it was the lad who’d just bought some smack from Jonny Sparks!

  Sparks had been set up. An undercover cop had just bought drugs from him and now he was being locked up for it. A sting.

  Mark tried to keep watching the proceedings from ground level and only really with one eye as Christie sauntered up to Jonny, who was being manhandled by a cop.

  ‘Hi, Jonny.’

  ‘Mr Christie,’ Jonny responded morosely, obviously knowing him.

  ‘Let’s have a look-see what you’ve got on you, shall we?’ Christie stepped up to him and patted him down, chatting pleasantly while he searched. ‘You look a bit of a mess. Someone give you the slapping you deserve?’

  Jonny’s mouth sneered. ‘He came off worse – anyway, what the hell’s going on? I ain’t done nowt. This is an illegal search. You haven’t even told me who you are.’

  Christie obviously couldn’t resist it. ‘Your worst nightmare, that’s who I am.’ He grinned as a hand slid into Jonny’s back jeans pocket. ‘Ooh, what’s this?’ The hand came out bearing a tightly packed roll of banknotes. ‘Nice amount,’ he said appreciatively. ‘Where did this come from?’

  ‘It’s mine,’ Jonny said, then for the first time got a proper look at Christie’s companion and recognized him as the person he’d just sold drugs to. Jonny’s shoulder’s fell as though his lungs had just been taken out. ‘Shit.’

  Christie smiled at him, a smile of triumph. His hand went into another of Jonny’s pockets and emerged with several wraps. Christie blew out his cheeks, tutted and shook his head sadly. ‘Jonny, Jonny, Jonny,’ he said sadly. ‘You’re under arrest on sus of supplying controlled drugs – oh, and suspicion of murder, too.’

  ‘What you talking about?’

  ‘We’ll chat down the nick, eh?’ He cautioned Jonny and told the cop holding him to bung him in the back of the van, then he quickly searched Eric and Sam, found wraps on them both and arrested them, too. They were bundled into the back of a car each.

  Christie turned his attention to Mark, still flattened on the ground. ‘Let him up.’ The cop on top of him heaved him to his feet. ‘Running with a bad crowd, eh?’

  ‘I don’t run with them.’

  ‘Yeah, right,’ the detective said disbelievingly.

  ‘Honest, I don’t.’

  ‘As if.’ Christie’s face showed even more disbelief. He searched Mark and found nothing.

  ‘See,’ Mark said, ‘and anyway, ask your undercover cop. He knows I wasn’t here when Jonny was selling stuff.’

  Christie shrugged, indifferently. ‘But you did turn up.’

  ‘Yeah – to hammer him.’

  ‘And why would that be?’

  ‘None o’ your business.’

  ‘Everything’s my business – you’re under arrest, too.’

  ‘What for? What for? I haven’t done nothing.’

  ‘Drug-dealing and shoplifting. How’s about that for starters? I’m sure once I get into your ribs, there’ll be more. Much, much more.’

  Mark’s gut did a classic back flip. He was shoved into the back of the plain police car and all four vehicles then drove off the car park at a sedate pace, past the group of gawping onlookers who’d gathered to watch proceedings. It was a group of people that included Katie Bretherton and Bradley Hamilton.

  Mark looked out of the back window of the cop car as it drove past. The expressions on the faces of his friends told Mark all he needed to know. He sunk into the seat and stared dead ahead, wishing he could be sucked into a black hole, never to reappear.

  Twelve

  The inside of a police cell. Eight feet by six feet, Mark Carter estimated, maybe a tad bigger, but not much. It had a thick steel door with a hatch in it that slid up and down, perhaps a foot square. The door was locked and bolted – slammed shut, actually – and the hatch had been snapped shut. Above the hatch was a spy hole. Nothing high-tech, just a round hole about the size of a two pence piece with a cover on the other side. The cell walls were painted a sickly cream colour and had names and obscenities carved into them, such as ‘Kev’, ‘Rocky’, ‘Moose ere 12/4’ (Mark knew Moose), and four-letter swear words. The toilet was stainless steel, fitted to the wall with hidden screws, designed for use without a normal toilet seat, just two curved raised ridges of wood on either side of the bowl on which your bum rested. Mark hadn’t been anywhere near the bog. It stank, hadn’t been flushed, was blocked with tissue, looked disgusting. There was a full-length bed, built as part of the cell structure, and high in the wall above it was a window made of thick, translucent, but not see-through, blocks of glass, a kind of green colour. There was
a thin plastic mattress on the bed and a folded, thick blanket which looked itchy and flea-ridden.

  God, the smell. The whole cell complex hummed, not just this cell. Mark guessed there were about fifty cells altogether and the reek was a combination of urine, sweat, alcohol, vomit and fear: the aroma of caged human beings. It hit Mark as soon as he was marched from the custody office into the cell corridor, an odour that sent a shiver down his spine, made him afraid and disorientated, too. He had been taken into the custody office and booked into the system so quickly and efficiently that he had lost track of everything, his head in a spin. When he’d been put into the cell, he could not work out where he was. Geographically he couldn’t fathom out where the cells were in relation to the exterior of the police station, which he’d seen a million times. Mentally, he was zombified.

  He sat on the bed, elbows on knees, facing the cell door.

  ‘Don’t normally put kids into adult cells,’ the less than friendly, harassed gaoler had explained as he’d propelled Mark into the cell, ‘but needs must when we’re full to brimming. Just be thankful you’re not sharing.’ That was when he slammed the door shut with a gut-sickening finality.

  Mark had also lost track of time. Couldn’t work out how long he’d been banged up. Minutes, certainly. An hour, possibly. More … he wasn’t sure.

  Being arrested had had a gigantic effect on him, completely blown his mind, having his liberty taken away from him. What a power that was, to take someone’s freedom away from them. He knew kids who revelled in being locked up, a big kudos thing, something that built up their status amongst their dumb, like-minded mates. Mark had always thought of them as futureless idiots. Kids who would never get jobs, who would spend most of their young adult lives in and out of nick, living a hand-to-mouth existence with no end in sight; growing up to be drunks, wife-beaters and drug-takers. Mark couldn’t work out when he’d actually seen through the futility of this kind of life and decided against going down that path. He had seen it for what it was, what it did to people, and he wanted far more from life.

  Yet here he was in a police cell.

  Mark Carter, prisoner.

  He dropped his head into his hands and started to sob.

  By the time the gaoler came for him, Mark had curled up on the hard mattress and cried himself to sleep. When the key went in the cell door he awoke groggily, as if he’d been out for hours, and stood up in his socked feet – because when he’d been booked in his trainers had been taken from him.

  ‘Time to be interviewed,’ the gaoler announced.

  Mark rubbed his eyes. ‘Right.’

  ‘You can put your footwear on.’ The gaoler pointed to the trainers outside the cell door in the corridor.

  Mark slid his cold feet into them and walked ahead of the gaoler, who directed him back to the custody office. Which was heaving with prisoners, all lined up at the reception desk accompanied by their arresting officers, or chucked into the holding cage. Mark recognized one or two faces. The gaoler steered him to another desk on which DCI Christie leaned, a pack of tapes in his hand, some papers, too.

  Mark was almost pleased to see him. A familiar face.

  Christie grinned amiably, but Mark sneered at him because that’s what was expected when you were locked up. Mark didn’t actually want to let on he was glad to see him. His sneer, though, seemed to make Christie grin even wider.

  ‘How you doing?’

  ‘A’right,’ Mark replied in a surly way.

  ‘I’m glad.’

  The two eyed each other cautiously, then Christie signed something on the custody record and said, ‘Follow me,’ turned and walked down another corridor to an interview room, opened the door and pointed. ‘In there.’ Mark edged past into the room, which was pretty bare: table, chairs, tape recorder, TV and DVD/Video player and a guy sitting at the table with a pen and pad. Mark didn’t know who he was. He looked young and eager, if a little frayed at the edges. ‘Sit down.’ Christie motioned to a chair next to the stranger, whilst he himself sat down on a chair at the opposite side of the table. ‘This is Mr Gregson, Social Services.’

  ‘Hello Mark …’ Gregson extended a hand. Mark recoiled as though the hand was a cobra.

  ‘What do I want Social Services for?’ he squeaked worriedly.

  ‘Because I’ve been unable to contact either your mother or brother,’ Christie said. ‘Mr Gregson will just be here for the interview.’

  ‘I’m not going into care,’ Mark blurted, panic-stricken, but with fire and defiance in his voice.

  ‘Nobody says you are,’ Mr Gregson said softly. ‘I’m here just to ensure you are looked after properly and are treated in accordance with the law. Nothing else.’

  It calmed Mark only slightly. He was feeling distrustful and extremely nervous, all those horror stories he’d heard about the cops and Social Services colluding and getting kids sent to care homes, stories he’d hardly even listened to in the past, were becoming a reality for him. His stomach felt as though it had been scraped empty, but yet he felt a desperate need to empty his bowels all of a sudden.

  Christie inserted the tapes into the machine and gave Mark a forced smile. ‘Let’s have a chat,’ he said and pressed the recording button. He checked his watch and the wall clock. Mark followed his eyes and it was then he realized he’d been in custody for three hours.

  Time passes so quickly when you’re having a good time, he thought grimly.

  Mark guessed that Christie had probably interviewed hundreds of people, but there was no way in which he was going to divulge anything to him, other than the truth, no matter what the pressure. He knew the cops twisted your words and set you up for things you hadn’t done and there was no way he was falling for any of the detective’s little ruses. Mark decided to keep it straight down the line and tell it as it was. Ultimately the truth couldn’t hurt and for a while it seemed a good option.

  They had talked for a while about the Jonny Sparks scenario. Christie seemed to accept and be very interested in Mark’s version of events, leading up to and including the fight, but he wouldn’t tell Christie why they were fighting. As far as Mark was concerned, that was none of his business. It was personal.

  ‘OK, I’ll have that,’ Christie said finally, wrapping up that part of the interview. ‘Now, do you want to tell me about the shoplifting?’

  Mark’s mouth clammed shut.

  ‘Cat got your tongue?’

  ‘Don’t know what you mean,’ he said, fidgeting.

  Christie snickered. ‘A lad fitting your description went into Boots this morning and nicked sandwiches and a drink.’

  That statement relieved Mark. ‘A lad fitting my description! That’s a bit thin, isn’t it? There’s a thousand lads fitting my description in this town. Anyway, I was at school,’ he bluffed. ‘Check.’

  Christie gave him the tight smile. ‘I did – and you weren’t.’ He picked up a TV remote control and pointed it at the TV fixed to the wall. It suddenly came to grainy life. Mark’s heart nearly stopped. ‘What’s that ad on TV?’ Christie asked rhetorically. ‘You’re captured 300 times a day on camera?’

  And Mark had been well and truly captured by Big Brother. From going into the shop – cut – to picking up the food and drink – cut – to waiting at the till with the woman buying perfume – cut – to legging it out of the door, goods in hand, nicked.

  ‘Not exactly crime of the century, is it?’ Mark said belligerently.

  ‘Not, it’s not, Mark,’ Christie agreed, turning off the TV, ‘but it’s a start, isn’t it?’ His thin, tight smile now looked unpleasant and dangerous.

  Mark felt Christie’s hooks digging into him.

  They were going to give him police bail, meaning he would have to come back to the station in three weeks’ time and present himself to the custody officer. By then, Christie told him, a decision would have been made on what to do with him.

  After the interview, Mark was bunged back in the cell for what seemed an age whilst the pap
erwork was sorted. He was then escorted back to the custody desk where a bleary-eyed, seen-it-all, bored-looking sergeant got him to sign the bail forms. Mr Gregory, the Social Services guy, was the co-signatory. Mark’s property was handed back to him and the sergeant gave him a wave.

  As he turned away from the desk, Christie was there waiting for him.

  ‘I’ll give you a lift home.’

  ‘You’re all right, I’ll walk,’ Mark said.

  ‘No, let me say it again: I’ll give you a lift home.’

  Mark ground his teeth and regarded Christie.

  ‘You’re a juvenile,’ Christie explained. ‘We, the police, have a duty of care, so I’ll be taking you home.’

  ‘Where’s my bike?’

  ‘Safe – it’ll be dropped off at the same time as you. Follow me.’ He turned and Mark, shoulders hunched, a big, pissed-off sigh coming from him, traipsed after Christie up a narrow corridor and into the secure garage area on the ground floor of the cop shop. A Ford Focus bleeped and flashed its lights as Christie walked toward it. ‘Get in the front,’ he said as he slotted in behind the wheel. He waited for Mark to settle in and strap up before he said, ‘We need to talk.’

  The automatic roller door started to rattle open as Christie started the car and then crept to the exit.

  Mark sank low in his seat, very uncomfortable in more ways than one.

  Christie swung the car out left, then at the next junction did another right toward the prom, then at the sea front headed south.

  ‘Fancy an ice cream?’

  Mark stared blankly at the detective. ‘You a perv or summat?’

  Christie chuckled, then shrugged his shoulders. ‘I thought we could talk and eat. Maybe you’d like a KFC instead?’ He looked at Mark and raised a knowing eyebrow.

  ‘Neither,’ Mark snarled. He sat back, folded his arms and stared dead ahead, both defiant and scared at the same time, like a trapped rat. He made one or two surreptitious glances at Christie, trying to weigh the man up. Mark had been lucky enough never to have been in the company of cops for any length of time and he just didn’t know the truth. Did they beat you up? Did they fit you up, or ‘verbal you’, as his mates called it? Could they be trusted, or what? And the bigger, burning question for Mark was – what the hell did this particular cop want?