by Bali Rai
I pulled Zeus on a little further and then took a left down another street, which ran parallel to the main road up to the park. I was halfway down the road when the green car passed me for a fourth time. This time it slowed right down and I was about to swear at the occupants at the top of my voice when Zeus made this deep growling sound and bolted from my grip. He turned sideways and then jumped at something behind me. I heard a horrible cry of pain and turned to see Zeus with his teeth stuck into the arm of a tall man in a long, dark coat.
I tried to scream but it came out with no volume and I was frozen, stuck to the same spot. The man punched and kicked at Zeus, trying to get him to let go of his arm. I screamed again and still made no sound and then I kicked the man between his legs. I mean, he was kicking Zeus. Suddenly Zeus let go, whimpered and ran off. Ran off! Leaving me with an irate pervert in a long coat, blood dripping from a bite wound in his arm and with a sharp pain in his groin that I had inflicted. I had just one thought going through my mind – well, two actually. The first was that I was dead and the second was ‘bloody dog’.
I turned and ran, the volume of my screams reaching full capacity. I sprinted straight ahead towards the safety of the main road, hoping to get to it and lose the pervert in the coat. But the ground underfoot was slippery with the rain and I lost my footing, went over on my ankle and hit my head against the side of a parked car. I was crying by then – really scared but at the same time really angry. Angry with the dog for running off and angry with the man. My head was spinning as I tried to get up and all I wanted was to be rescued by my dad or by Billy like the first time we met. Or Nanny. Anyone. And where were the police when you needed—?
The man grabbed me from behind, his forearm around my throat. I tried to scream. To bite him. I kicked out and struggled and wriggled and fought but it was no use. His arm was so tight around my throat that I was gagging and I could feel myself beginning to pass out. I could smell his aftershave, which seemed to have a strange musky edge to it, and I noticed his fingernails, which were long like a woman’s and dirty beyond belief You see, I was trying to see as much of my attacker as possible so that I’d be able to tell the police afterwards. It was something that a girl on a TV documentary had said she had done. Isn’t it funny what goes through your mind sometimes? I think that I struggled right up until I passed out – I don’t know for sure, but the last thing that I remember thinking was, Please don’t kill me, please don’t kill me. I don’t want to die. I want my mum. I WANT MY MUM! . . .
nine:
wednesday, 8 p.m.
‘I WAS WONDERING if you had seen Ellie today?’
I was sitting at the kitchen table reading the newspaper when Ellie’s dad came in with my mum. Looking up at Mr Sykes, I shook my head. No. At least not since she had taken Zeus out.
‘It’s just that she hasn’t come in yet and she’s not answering her phone. She never misses her tea,’ he said, sounding worried.
Like an idiot I ignored the tension in his voice. ‘Yeah, I know. For such a fit girl she loves her food, don’t she?’
I hadn’t meant fit as in fit – just fit as in healthy, but Mr Sykes raised an eyebrow at me through his worried expression. I felt about Kylie Minogue big.
‘Billy, why don’t I make Ellie’s dad a cup of tea and let you ring round your friends. See if anyone has seen her.’ My mum glared at me.
I got up, chucking my paper on the table, trying to avoid Mr Sykes’ gaze. Man, sometimes I can be a right knobhead. ‘I’ll try Della first. She usually ends up round there,’ I said, trying to sound reassuring and failing badly.
I was beginning to get worried myself. I mean, Ellie was usually very good about not being late back from anywhere. She always rang one of the Crew or her mum. Man, she rang her mum five times a day anyway. Even when she was at mine – and I lived next door.
I began to get scared when Della told me that Ellie had been planning to get me to take her to the cinema. I hadn’t heard from her since she had taken Zeus for that walk. Zeus was missing too and I thought about mentioning it but then I thought again. No point worrying her and Mr Sykes any further, especially as Ellie would probably walk in the door any second. Or so I thought. I rang Jas and Will, asking if they had seen Ellie. They hadn’t. I told them to come round, explaining that as we couldn’t find her, we should go out and look for her. Della and Sue turned up just as I put my phone away, Sue joining my mum and Mr Sykes in the kitchen while Della and I went up to my room.
‘Any of the others seen her, Billy?’ Della looked worried.
‘No, Dell.’
‘Billy, you best call Beavis and Butthead. We need to go look for my sister.’ Her eyes were beginning to water.
‘Already done it, Della. Look, she’ll be all right. She’s probably sulking somewhere because I made her take Zeus out.’ I was beginning to wish I had given in and taken the dog out myself.
‘Out in this weather? Billy, have you even seen how much it’s rainin’ out deh?’
‘Yeah.’ The feeling began to grow. It was my fault.
‘I’m soaked up to my tits just from gettin’ out my mum’s car’
‘Well, maybe she’s at a friend’s house. You know – someone from school and that.’ It was a possibility, but I didn’t believe it. She would have phoned someone. ‘We’d better go look for her,’ I said, desperate to do something.
‘Yeah. When the other two decide to show up.’
‘No. You and me can go out now. I’ll call Jas and tell him to go looking with Will. We can cover more ground if we split up.’
‘You know what? That’s the best idea you’ve had tonight.’ She looked at me with her watery eyes.
‘Are you angry, Dell?’
‘No, I ain’t angry. I’m just scared.’
I put my arm round her and pulled her closer to me. ‘Hey, kid. It’s OK. Don’t get too worried. We don’t know that anything’s wrong yet.’
‘Yeah we do, Billy. We do. Ellie wouldn’t just stay out. She’s too sensible for that. And you know it’s true.’
I tried to stop Della from crying but I couldn’t and deep down, in the pit of my stomach, I was scared too. Every day on the news there were different stories about abductions and murder and that. Not to Ellie. Not our Ellie. Everyone knew Ellie round here. No one would harm her – would they? She was like our little baby sister. I started to get really angry inside.
Ellie’s mum came over to the house around ten that evening. She had been waiting at home just in case Ellie rang. She hadn’t. Mr Sykes sat staring at the television – I had switched it on to break the silence that had descended over the kitchen. Sue, Della’s mum, was helping to make everyone some food and tea, talking in a whisper to my mum.
Della and I had been out looking for Ellie around the local streets, along with Jas and Will. Between us we had split the ghetto in two and covered it that way. We had asked all the other crews, the working girls who were just coming out on the streets, the dealers, pimps, winos. Everyone. Della had even gone straight up to the head of an older crew, that nutter Busta. Busta didn’t like me and he’d laughed at us, which made Della angrier than usual. Man, even I hadn’t spotted the punch that she let loose to the side of that boy’s head. It was a major problem now, though – one that I was going to have to sort out. It was the stupid way that things round our area worked. We had to run off before he had a chance to call his boys, but I was going to have to face them all tomorrow or the next day. Soon.
‘I never meant to punch the bwoi, Billy,’ Della told me.
We were both wet and cold and drinking tea. Jas and Will had just turned up with no news and I had told them about the trouble with Busta.
‘What does it matter, man?’ Jas had his face set in its baddest mask. Nanny called it a ‘screwface’.
‘Yeah, who cares?’ agreed Will. ‘The babygirl is missing and all we can do is beat up next man.’
Bad move.
‘Say what? You havin’ a go at me, bad bwoi?’
shouted Della, her eyes almost glowing.
‘Relax, Della. I ain’t having a go at you. Busta can wait. I ain’t bothered by him.’
‘Yeah, that bwoi will get his beating soon enough. Right now we got to find Ellie,’ added Jas.
Della’s glare softened as she looked at Jas and she pulled her chair closer to him.
‘Billy, can you come over here, please?’ It was my mum. She and Sue were standing by the kitchen sink with Ellie’s mum, Marge.
I got up and went over, rivulets of water running out of my hair and down my neck, making me shiver. ‘What’s up, Mum?’ I asked, smiling at Mrs Sykes, hoping that it would stop her from worrying too much. Fat chance.
‘Let’s get this straight. None of you found out anything?’
‘No,’ I told her. ‘No one’s seen her anywhere.’
‘And the dog is still missing?’ added Sue.
‘Yeah. I don’t know where they could be.’
‘That’s it then,’ started Ellie’s mum. ‘We need to call the police. Report her missing.’
‘Yes, I think we do,’ agreed my mum, giving me a strange, wistful look. Sad almost.
Sue went over to the phone and lifted the receiver just as the kitchen door opened and Zeus slouched into the house looking like he had been in the bath.
‘Zeus!’ I went over and petted him, thinking that Ellie would walk in right behind him. She didn’t. Nanny did.
‘Me find this beast cry in’ over near the park,’ he said, shaking his head so that the rain flew off his dreads in every direction.
‘Where’s Ellie?’ asked Mr Sykes. ‘Was she with the dog?’
‘I’m sorry, Brian – she wasn’t.’
Nanny looked at all the faces in the kitchen and then cocked his head to the left, something he did when he was angry or, in this case, confused. ‘Why? What’s up?’
‘Ellie’s missing,’ I told him. ‘She went out with Zeus hours ago and she hasn’t come back yet.’
Nanny just stood and stared at me. Then he looked down at Zeus. ‘The beast has been in a fight,’ he said, pointing at Zeus’ head. ‘Him have blood ’pon him face.’
I had a closer look. There was a cut above one of his eyes and another deeper cut by his left ear.
‘Oh my God!’ Ellie’s mum started to cry.
‘Sue, call the police.’ My mum’s voice rang out over the kitchen like a foghorn. Clear and authoritative. She was the calmest one out of us all. Like she was used to situations like these. Which I suppose she was.
Sue was still holding the receiver. She put it down, picked it up again and dialled. ‘Yes, I’d like the police please.’
Della started crying and Jas gave her a hug. I went over and stood by Mr Sykes, trying to stay calm, only my stomach was diving at an impossible speed, making me feel sick. My mum hugged Marge, telling her that everything would be all right. But Marge just stood and shook slightly, her bottom lip quivering.
‘I’d like to report a missing person,’ said Sue into the receiver. She stopped and thought for a second before continuing, ‘I mean, a missing child . . .’
ten:
wednesday, 11.30 p.m.
THE POLICE TOOK nearly an hour to come round. They spent a long time next door before Ellie’s dad rang to say that the police wanted to talk to us. I was in the kitchen when I took the call, trying to stay calm. The rest of the Crew were in the living room with Nanny. No one was talking. There was an air of disbelief in the house. We had all seen this type of thing on the news or in a drama show on the telly, but it wasn’t the kind of thing that we ever expected to happen to someone we knew. Not that we knew exactly what had happened to Ellie. We didn’t. But it was hard not to fear the worst.
What about that weirdo she’d seen a few times? Was he a nonce? Or could it be connected with the money we’d found? Nah – we’d handed that in, so it couldn’t be someone wanting that back.
I couldn’t sit still. I spent the time waiting for the police by moving between the kitchen, the living room and my bedroom, all the while blaming myself for what had happened. If only I had given in to Ellie, like I normally did, and taken Zeus myself, none of this would have happened. She would be here now, moaning at me to take her to the cinema, dissing some lad at her school, or calling me a sad old man. I wanted to go back out to look for her, but where would I have gone? Who would I have spoken to? I went into the living room at one point and just stood by Della, looking at everyone in turn without saying one word. I didn’t know what to say. Nanny was sitting in his favourite chair, a beaten-up leather thing that my mum had ‘rescued’ from the top of a skip and restored. He had a reggae CD playing at low volume and sat staring at nothing in particular. It felt like everyone, even Zeus who had retired to his basket in the kitchen, was numb. I suppose we were.
Two uniformed coppers turned up, along with a bloke in a suit who introduced himself as DI Griffin. They followed Ellie’s dad into our kitchen, and one of the uniformed officers asked to speak to me, sitting down to take details. DI Griffin was talking to my mum and Sue, asking them who they were and explaining that he was part of a new unit that dealt with child abduction and paedophilia. As he asked them questions I could see that Sue was becoming agitated. I didn’t hear exactly what he was asking but it must have been something that upset her.
DI Griffin eventually got round to me after asking everyone else individually about what they knew. Jas started to say that they were out of order, asking us all separately, as if we had concocted some cover story and they wanted to catch us out. ‘Man, that ain’t right. What – they sayin’ we know something? That we done it?’
‘It is a strange thing to do,’ I said, thinking back to all the police crime series that I had seen on the telly. But then the TV was hardly real life, unless you were one of those sad people who thought Big Brother was about reality and cried when soap characters got married or died.
‘It ain’t strange, bro. It’s out of order. They are making us out to be criminals and we’re the ones that asked them for help.’
I didn’t know what to say to that and before I could reply the policeman asked me into the kitchen. ‘So, Billy. You were the last person to see Ellie.’ It wasn’t a question. It was a statement. Griffin, the DI, picked at his ear with a finger.
‘Yeah, I was,’ I said, trying not to stare as his little finger disappeared into his ear up to the knuckle.
‘So, did she seem upset or worried about anything?’ he said, pulling his finger out and wiping it on his trousers. The scutter.
‘No, not really. She didn’t wanna take Zeus for a walk but then she never does,’ I said.
‘And you and her didn’t have a fight or an argument? Lovers’ tiff, maybe?’ This time he clasped his hands in front of him, staring into my eyes.
‘You what?’ I wondered what he was on about. What did he mean ‘lovers’ tiff’?
‘Well . . .?’
I stared straight back into Griffin’s eyes. ‘No, we never had no argument and we couldn’t have had a “lovers’ tiff” because we ain’t lovers.’
‘That’s not the impression that we’ve been getting, son,’ he said, unclasping his hands and picking his left ear with his right forefinger this time.
‘I ain’t no son of yours and I don’t know where you get that impression but you’re wrong,’ I said angrily.
‘Your friends seem to think you are a little bit fond of her . . .’ He stared deeper into my eyes, trying to find some weakness. Trying to make me anxious.
‘Yeah, yeah. I doubt they said that.’
‘Maybe she doesn’t feel like that about you. Maybe she’s got another boyfriend. One . . . let’s just say a boy less colourful than you . . . ‘With that he smiled, proud of himself.
‘You what?’ I couldn’t believe what Griffin was saying.
‘Well, you do have a previous record, son.’
‘So? That makes me what, exactly . . .?’
‘Colourful.’ This time he picked his rig
ht ear again, rolling up whatever he found between thumb and forefinger and flicking it at the ground.
‘You can’t get away with that!’
‘Calm down, son. I’m only ascertaining what you know.’
I was livid. I wanted to jump up and smack him in the mouth but my sense got the better of me.
‘Your gang are a strange bunch, aren’t they? Very mixed.’
‘Yeah, and . . .?’
‘That’s very strange for this area, isn’t it? I mean, round here your blacks stick with blacks and your Asians with other Asians and white kids are few and far between.’
‘That says more about how little you know than anything else,’ I replied. ‘And where would you put me, mate?’
‘Well, you’re a mixture, aren’t you?’
‘And . . .?’
It went on for another twenty minutes, with Griffin asking me stuff that had nothing to do with Ellie’s disappearance. It was as though he was trying to get me to say something that would incriminate me or wind me up. In the end I just gave him yes or no answers. I wanted to punch him but I stayed calm and let him carry on. I wasn’t going to let him get the better of me.
The police left after Ellie’s dad came round and gave them a recent photograph of her. They said they would send someone round within twenty-four hours to follow up. Ellie’s dad went back to his house. Sue gave Jas and Will a lift home and I sat up with Nanny as he listened to various reggae CDs. I was really tired but I couldn’t sleep. My mind played over and over, trying to think where Ellie could be. Who could have harmed her. I told Nanny about the way that DI Griffin had questioned me.
Nanny just smiled and nodded his head. ‘What did you expect, Billy?’
‘But I haven’t done anything wrong.’
‘Dem nah care about dat. Is a little white girl gone missing. That’s all they care about. Not how you feel.’