Grow

by Luke Palmer

  ‘Could you stand back please, Miss, and wait your turn.’

  ‘Oh, we’re together,’ I add.

  ‘So it’s not about the incident with the cyclist?’ The officer crosses her arms.

  ‘No, but I thought PC Reynolds might—’

  ‘So what’s this attack?’ There’s a squeak of feedback from the microphone, and the last word rings around the waiting room like a siren.

  Dana rejoins, speaking quickly, ‘There’re a group of people who are going to hurt someone – some people – soon. We’re part of that group but we want you to stop them. They’re looking for us – for me – fuck – so can you hurry up?’

  The officer gestures towards a large notice above her head about how abuse or bad language will not be tolerated.

  I place a hand on Dana’s back, steer her gently to one side. ‘I’m sorry, but she’s right. We really need to talk to someone quickly. The … situation. It’s quite … advanced?’ I know that I’m failing to sound as if I know what I’m talking about. ‘And they’re looking for Dana. I think they’ll hurt her if they find her.’

  The officer appraises us slowly, her eyes moving from me to Dana and back again. Despite the seriousness of the situation, I try smiling at her to be as disarming as I can. Dana’s technique is the opposite. She shrugs off my hand and is just about to throw herself at the microphone again when there is a noise from the door. A man is shoved into the foyer, his hands handcuffed in front of him. Behind him, holding him by the collar, is the officer who sat in my living room.

  She speaks to the woman behind the glass. ‘Graham’s been doling out fake tenners again. I’m going to book him and stick him in number five if it’s free.’

  ‘Really? Again, Graham?’ The microphone seems to working fine now.

  The man hangs his head.

  ‘Yeah, fine.’ The officer behind the desk presses a button, there’s a loud noise – somewhere between a grinding of cogs and a foghorn – and our police officer pulls open the door to the right of the window.

  ‘PC Reynolds!’ I shout. The officer, still man-handling the fraudster, stops and looks at me a moment.

  ‘Do I know you?’

  ‘That’s not PC Reynolds,’ comes the voice from behind the glass. ‘That’s Sargant Prangle. I think these kids are after you, Sarge. Something about an attack and some people being after them.’

  The Sargant looks at me, quizzically. ‘You were the kid from the bike crash, end of last year, right?’

  ‘Yes, that’s me. I gave a statement.’

  ‘Wait there.’

  And the door clicks shut.

  The tinny voice behind the glass squeaks again. ‘You should have said Sargant Prangle if you meant Sargant Prangle. She looks nothing like PC Reynolds. Take a seat. She’ll probably be a while.’

  Before I can reply, I hear a squeak as the microphone is switched off.

  SIXTY THREE

  ‘I don’t like this, Josh. We need to be on that side of the door.’

  I shrug. ‘They’re not going to come looking for us here, are they?’

  ‘They will if they think that’s where we’re going.’

  ‘Would Carl think that? What if Dan says something.’

  ‘I don’t think Carl’s taking Dan’s calls at the moment. That thing with his leg. That was Carl.’

  Dana sits down heavily in one of the three plastic chairs in the foyer. I take the one next to her.

  We leaf through the out-of-date magazines on the table. Dana wastes some time on her phone. Every now and then, I catch the eye of the officer behind the glass screen. At one point, there’s a brief exchange between her and a middle-aged man who comes in to complain about a parking ticket. He doesn’t seem to understand that it’s the council, not the police, who issue parking tickets, and that he needs to take his complaint there. He then asks if he can submit a criminal charge against the parking attendant, at which point the microphone clicks off.

  Several times the buzzer goes off and officers go in or out through the door, but it’s a slow half hour before Sargant Prangle comes into the foyer and ushers us through. Though it’s a relief to be back here at last, getting closer to the moment of telling our story is anything but.

  We follow her past the rows of desks in the middle of the station, most piled high with files and paper. We go along a couple of corridors, their various posters peeling slowly in the half-light of more fluorescent tubes. The paint on the walls is doing the same. We follow the Sargant into a small interview room towards the back of the building.

  She waits until Dana and I are sitting down before she starts. ‘I had a feeling I might be seeing you again. How’s your friend’s leg?’

  I realise after a second she’s talking about Jamie, not Dan. I tell her he’s been out of plaster for a while now, and is showing everyone at school the thick, black hair that’s grown where the cast was. He should be able to start football training again after Easter.

  ‘Good. But this isn’t about the accident with the cyclist, is it?’

  ‘No,’ I say, a little surprised.

  ‘Josh, the people that you have been … associating with have been on our radar for some time. And you,’ she checks some paperwork, then turns to Dana. ‘It’s Dana, isn’t it?’

  Dana shuffles uncomfortably.

  ‘You look familiar, Dana. Have met before?’

  ‘So you know about Carl? The meetings? The Lions? All of it?’ Dana’s voice is tense and she’s gripping the edge of the table. She wants to change the subject.

  Sargant Prangle looks at her for a few seconds, then leans back in her chair. ‘Maybe not all of it. Why don’t you tell me what you know, and I’ll see where it fits with what we do have. The events that we know about. We know, for example, there are regular meetings at the Crown, and there have been some other… instances of other members’ activities.’

  I think back to the meeting, Carl’s talk about agitations, the big guy called Barney laughing at what he’d done.

  Dana speaks again, quieter this time. ‘Did you know I was… involved?’

  ‘I’ll have to check. But if you’re not on our records, probably not. Is there a reason you’d be on our records?’

  Dana is silent, staring at the table. I see a pulse in her jaw.

  Sargant Prangle turns back to me. ‘OK, look. Carl and his Lions are in our sights, and he’s gone quiet recently. I’d like to think it’s because the momentum has gone out of his campaign – or whatever he calls it. But from talking to other forces around the country that’s unfortunately not always the case. Which means he might be planning something.’

  ‘That’s why we’re here.’ I am more than a little relieved that the hard part of this whole thing – explaining the group and about Carl – has already been done. Dana is picking at the chipped table-top with her thumb nail.

  ‘We’ve been clocking the meetings for the last eight months, I’d say. Not long after they started. Of course, we were informed when Carl moved back here, his previous offences. But he was quiet to begin with, kept himself out of mischief.’

  Dana tightens in her chair. I hear her breathing change, like her throat’s closing up.

  Sargant Prangle notices too, her eyes locking on Dana as she continues. ‘Until that stunt at the mosque last year when he was chucking rocks from right underneath his own banner. We’ve seen the videos on that private section of his website and—’

  Dana speaks again. Her voice is thin. ‘So why haven’t you done anything? Why have you let him get away with it?’

  Sargant Prangle leans forward. One hand edges across the table, towards Dana. ‘It’s … complicated, Dana. The videos won’t stand up in court. It’s not clear enough who’s who, and we can’t identify the gentleman that gets attacked. He’s never reported it. So we don’t really know who’s doing what. Except…’ She looks back at me. ‘You’re lucky no one was hurt at that charity shop, Josh.’

  My breath stops in my throat. I can’t speak.


  Sargant Prangle continues. ‘I had a hunch it was you. They didn’t show your face, but I thought I recognised your coat, the way you were walking. I was going to come knocking on your door for the full story, but something told me you might come looking for me, so I waited.’

  Dana stands up suddenly, her chair falling backwards and clattering against the wall. ‘You’re playing with us! You could have stepped in at any time. Stopped it. Arrested him, Carl, all of us, so I didn’t have to … So he wouldn’t have …’

  It all pours out of Dana then, all the hurt she’s been carrying. I thought I was doing an OK job of helping her but, as she lets out a deep groan that quickly takes flight as a scream, it’s obvious I haven’t been. The anger at her father, her mother, at Carl. All the ‘what ifs’ form on her face in the second it takes Sargant Prangle to get round to our side of the table. She grabs Dana’s fists, holding her by the wrists as they flail towards her. Dana only has a few good attempts in her before she’s weeping into the Sargant’s chest, arms flopping in the Sargant’s tight grip, and then hanging limply at her sides.

  Sargant Prangle speaks into the walkie-talkie on her shoulder, and soon there’s a knock at the door. A woman enters with her hair cut into a soft bob. She looks kind. She leads Dana away. When the door shuts, it’s just the two of us.

  Sargant Prangle lets the silence stew for a while. ‘So, what are you here for, Josh?’

  My voice is barely above a whisper. ‘Something bad’s going to happen. People are in danger.’

  More silence, then she speaks the words I’ve been dreading.

  ‘Josh, we need to call your mum.’

  SIXTY FOUR

  It takes a few hours for Mum to arrive. I have to wait in one of the juvenile cells. There’s a mattress, covered in green vinyl, on the narrow bed, and a door between the toilet and the main area, which is about three metres square. Apart from that, it’s just bare, white tiles on the floor and the ceiling. And silent.

  After the first hour, I ask if I can see Dana. I’m told she’s sleeping in a cell on the same corridor. I go back to sitting on the bunk, counting the tiles, figuring out how I’m going to explain all of this.

  After a lot more waiting and counting tiles (I keep losing count after about two hundred and thirty, and counting the same tiles twice) I finally hear a key in the door. It swings open to reveal Mum. She’s standing next to Sargant Prangle. She’s like the sun; I can’t look directly at her. I’d go blind and melt if I even tried. I don’t know if she’s more relieved or furious.

  ‘You … silly bugger,’ are the first and only words she says to me as we make our way back to the interview room.

  She sits quietly as I tell Sargant Prangle – and the tape recorder – what I know. I start from the beginning, with Alan’s link to the website. About going to the meeting at the Crown. About how they’re doing it all for me. Because of me. About the SIM card that I stuck inside my drawer which I’ve brought with me. It goes straight into a little plastic bag marked ‘evidence’. I tell them about how the plan is to kidnap Ahmed after school on a particular day, use him as bait to draw his mother out, then kidnap her as well, film what Carl and his machete will do to them and put it on the internet with a list of demands. For every day the demands are not met, a target will be bombed by the White Lions. I don’t know what the targets are, but I explain to the tape machine what Dana has explained to me, about the chemicals that Carl’s been stockpiling, where he’s keeping them. The words, what they signify, feel like bile in my throat. The thought of Carl’s plan has coiled itself around my every waking thought for months, but the hard fact of speaking the words aloud feels like releasing a thousand serpents into the room. Then Ahmed’s words come back to me, about decency, compassion, humanity. I explain my role, what I was supposed to be doing. It gets hard to talk towards the end. I tell them about Vince and Alan and Carl taking me to the charity shop, about what they made me do, how I injured my hand.

  When I finish, Mum is crying.

  Sargant Prangle goes to press stop on the tape recorder, but hesitates a moment, then leaves it running. ‘That’s a very brave thing you just did, Josh. Thank you. I want to tell you that this is not your fault. These people have been preying on you for a long time. What they’re doing is not because of you, or for you. You are not the centre of this. I want you to think about something for me for a minute. Before Alan and Vince and the meetings, has anyone else ever talked to you about these kinds of things? Used that kind of hate speech? Consistently brought up the topic or asked you about it?’

  I think very hard, but nothing comes. It’s almost like the life I had before that first meeting belongs to someone else now. ‘No. Nothing I can think of,’ I say.

  ‘OK. Just one final question. Do you think you were followed here today?’

  ‘No.’ I’m certain of this.

  She speaks the time into the recorder, then presses stop, leans back and sighs, rubs her eyes with the palms of her hands before speaking again. ‘We’re going to act on this immediately.’ Despite the hardness in her voice, there’s a sense of uncertainty about her. ‘I’m going to make some calls, get the boys in who specialise in this. We’re only a rural station.’ She looks a little guilty at this point. ‘Now, if no one suspects you’re here today, as you’ve said, the boys’ll probably prefer a dawn raid – gives us time to verify a few of these allegations. We can’t send an officer home with you, but we’ll make sure a local patrol passes your house more often if that would make you feel safer?’

  Mum shakes her head. Perhaps she’s had enough of police officers at our house. Or perhaps she didn’t hear. Too busy thinking about what I’ve done.

  ‘OK. We’ll be in touch. Tomorrow probably.’

  ‘What about Dana? She can’t go to her house.’

  ‘We know. We can’t get hold of her mother. We’ll … make arrangements.’

  ‘Can’t she come with us? Mum?’

  Mum jerks her head, as if just waking up at hearing me call her. ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Can Dana stay with us? Until we hear from the police?’

  ‘Fine with me.’ Her voice is barely above a whisper.

  There’re some forms to sign, and Mum double-takes when she sees Dana in her clothes. Dana quickly wraps her coat tighter around herself.

  ‘Hello again, Mrs Milton.’

  ‘Hello, Dana. I’ll get the car and meet you both out the front. Five minutes.’

  ‘There’s a back door, Mrs Milton. Best to use that, I think. It’s on Pond Street. I’ll get someone to wait there and they’ll radio me when you arrive.’

  We spend an awkward ten minutes with Sargant Prangle at her desk as she types away on her computer. There’s an indiscernible crackle from her radio, and she stands. Leading us even deeper into the bowels of the station, she speaks over her shoulder to me. ‘Anything suspicious, you call us, here at the station. OK? Your mum’s got my direct number, Josh, but if you can’t get through, dial 999 if it’s urgent. Stay out of the way. Stay home. We’ll be in touch tomorrow.’

  The blue, steel door opens onto a thin road and some dumpsters. Mum sits rigid in the driving seat of the car. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but now we’ve emerged back into daylight the world looks no different at all.

  SIXTY FIVE

  I open the front passenger door for Dana and get into the back. We’re halfway home before anyone speaks. It’s Mum who breaks the silence.

  ‘Don’t think that you two will be sharing a bed.’

  The heat in my cheeks is immediate. ‘Mum, no. It’s not like that.’

  ‘Oh. Well. OK then. It’s not like I know anything about your life at the moment, Josh, so how would I know? It’s not as if you tell me anything anymore, is it?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Milton.’

  ‘Don’t worry, Dana, it’s just very difficult when your son is something of a stranger to you. When he’s the kind of boy who smashes shop windows with hammers and wants to kidn
ap the son of one your colleagues and blow up the whole world.’

  ‘Mum, I—’

  ‘Don’t, Josh. Not now.’ I can see her knuckles whiten on the steering wheel.

  ‘He didn’t want to, Mrs Milton. The guy who’s in charge, Carl, he’s horrible. He makes you do things you don’t want to.’

  ‘I’m sure you’re right, Dana. But I raised a son – your father raised a son, Josh – who didn’t get involved with those sorts of people. A son who spoke to us about things that worried him or that he didn’t understand.’

  ‘What don’t I understand, Mum? I told you about the website – those websites I'd been going to – about how it felt like it was helping. About how it felt good to be angry. What is it that I still don’t understand?’

  ‘Your father would not have tolerated—’

  ‘But he’s not here, Mum, is he?’ I’m shouting now, my anger filling the car. ‘He’s not here and he’s not been here for a long time now. And nor have you. So what am I supposed to do while you’re off with Mr fucking Walters?’

  ‘I don’t know, Josh!’ Mum is shouting too now. A long blare from a car horn sounds behind us as we speed through a red light. ‘I don’t fucking know, OK? I don’t have an answer. Any answers. And don’t think that I’m not fucking angry too!’