Someone Else's Son (30 page)

‘You just don’t get it, do you?’ Dayna finally said.

‘What?’

‘How it all works? The gangs and stuff. The other kids and what it’s like if you
are
different.’

‘One day you can enlighten me. For now, I just want to talk about Friday. Get things straight. So you sat on the wall, ate chips, and then what?’

Dayna let out a huge sigh. She thought carefully, swallowed, then spoke. ‘Then they came. Like from nowhere.’

‘Who came, love?’ Dennis fully intended on taking her down to the station after this. He knew she would never speak freely there, but once it was out, the truth purged, it would be easier to get it down in a statement.

‘The gang. Eight, nine, ten of them. All, like, suddenly having a go at Max.’ Dayna stared at the pavement, concentrating on each of her footfalls as she spoke.

‘That must have been scary.’ Dennis thought of the CCTV. Only five youths.

‘It was.’

‘What were they doing or saying?’

Dayna seemed to clam up. ‘I dunno. Like making comments and stuff.’

‘Why?’

She stopped and turned. ‘It was only fucking Friday that he died. I’ve hardly cried yet.’ Her hands flapped about. She was distraught.

‘Here.’ Dennis rationed out another cigarette.

‘It was the same old shit. They wanted his money. His phone. They tormented us.’

‘Did Max give up the stuff?’

Dayna faltered, then spoke. ‘Not this time. That’s why . . .’ She let out a hiccup and a puff of smoke. ‘That’s why it ended like it did. They say you should just hand it over, right?’

Dennis nodded. ‘So Max refused to give them his phone.’ He tried to picture it all. ‘And were you two still sitting on the wall?’

‘God, no,’ she said. ‘They’d knocked the chips from my hand and dragged us off. I got grazes on my legs.’

Dennis recalled the crime scene. He knew the wall she was referring to. It was ten feet at least from where Max was stabbed. The chips were bloodied, lying right beside the body.

‘They dragged you both off?’

‘Yeah, a couple of them did,’ Dayna said. She paused and frowned. ‘Max by the arms and me by the hair.’ She was nodding vigorously.

He gave a cursory glance at Dayna’s head but he wouldn’t know if there’d been trauma. He would check the autopsy report for bruising to the boy’s arms.

‘Then they surrounded us. One of them groped my bum. I was shaking. I was so scared.’

‘It must have been horrible.’ No more questions. Just let her talk.

‘Then suddenly there was a knife. They said they’d heard Max liked a fight, that we were going to get it. It was one of those switchblades or butterfly knives. It came from nowhere, like one of those magic tricks.’ She took two drags of the cigarette in quick succession then stopped. ‘I never thought they’d use it though. They were, like, always just threatening us and stuff.’

‘So you knew them?’ Dennis had wanted her to keep going, but this had to be asked. ‘They’d threatened you before?’

She shrugged. ‘Yeah, but I don’t know their names.’

‘Were they from your school?’

‘Maybe. Don’t reckon they go to school now. Dunno.’

‘But you could identify them if you had to?’

Dayna shrugged again. She looked pained. ‘They had their hoods up. All pulled tight round their faces.’

Dennis nodded. That’s what he’d seen on the CCTV.

‘Do you remember what their clothes were like?’ They were walking slowly again. He was following Dayna’s lead.

‘Usual stuff. Tracksuit bottoms. Really white trainers. Hoodies. One had stripes on the sleeve, I think.’

Again, Dennis thought of the CCTV. When they were back at the station, he would show her some pictures. It was going to be a long evening, but he was sure of one thing. Dayna Ray wasn’t going home without making a statement and giving them a damn good description of who stabbed Max.

She was freezing, even though it wasn’t actually that cold. Her mother had been furious she couldn’t look after Lorrell that night while she and Kev went down the pub.

‘We always fucking go,’ she’d screamed at the cop when he’d told her he was taking Dayna to the station and did she want to accompany her daughter. ‘What am I s’posed to do with her?’ She pointed at Lorrell, who was rolling about on top of the dog. ‘I can’t leave her.’

But Dayna knew that’s exactly what she would do. She felt desperately worried and sad for her little sister, but the cop had said no when Dayna had asked if she could bring her along. ‘It’s serious,’ he’d told her. ‘We need you to focus.’

Dennis told her to call him by his first name and she felt a tingle of importance. It was good to have something blur the sadness for a while. Before she’d left, Kev and her mother were arguing about money and there was the bang of a pan as another horrid meal was slopped from a can. She was glad to be out of it. Especially with missing Max as if someone had butchered a piece of her heart. She reckoned being sad at the police station would be better than being sad at home. No one there cared, whereas these cops had probably given her more attention in the last twenty-four hours than she’d ever got from her mother.

‘What’s that?’ she asked when they were on the way to the police station.

‘The radio,’ Dennis replied. ‘So I can talk to all the other detectives.’

‘No Radio One then?’ She trailed a finger over it. Max would have thought this was exciting; riding in an undercover cop car when you hadn’t done anything wrong. She’d never been arrested, but plenty of kids at school bragged of nights in cells for being drunk on the street and fighting or busted for drugs. It made them big.

On the way, Dayna thought about what she was going to say. Dennis had already told her she would have to tell him and some other detectives the whole story again while he wrote it down. They’d make a recording, too, he’d said, so they didn’t get anything wrong. Her fists balled and her fingers grew numb and sweaty. A voice crackled through the radio and Dennis answered, but she didn’t understand what they were saying. Was she going mad because of it all, she wondered, as the bloodied body of the only person who had ever understood her swallowed up her thoughts?

‘I can’t believe he’s dead,’ she said quietly. At first, she thought Dennis hadn’t heard because he was silent.

‘Neither can I,’ was his eventual reply.

 

Dayna was left in the care of a woman who, when they arrived, appeared stern, uninterested and cold. But she quickly softened when she spoke to Dayna. Masters disappeared with two other detectives and called out that he’d be back shortly.

‘I’m Jess Britton,’ the woman said. She put her hands on Dayna’s shoulders. Her breath smelt of tea. Her hair was dark and cropped. ‘I’m a detective like Dennis. Come with me and we’ll get you a hot chocolate if that machine’s working.’

‘Thanks.’ Dayna followed her. What she really wanted was a fag. They were the same height, she noticed, glancing sideways. She wondered if Jess had a gun tucked on her somewhere, but couldn’t see where. She was wearing a white blouse and slim-leg black trousers. Not a cop uniform exactly but it made her look tough, slightly manly, even though she was pretty.

They stopped along a corridor – grey lino floor, shiny grey walls half-height with dirty cream above – and Jess stuffed two coins into the drinks machine. Everything smelt of disinfectant, like at school on a Monday. Jess kicked the machine and out came a plastic cup of frothy chocolate that Dayna could hardly stand to hold it was so hot. She found it in her to smile in place of a thank-you. Being in the bowels of the police station had wilted what little strength she had left. How she would survive the next few hours, she didn’t know. What was it Dennis had said?
It’ll be gruelling, but you’ll get through it
.

What, she wondered, was
it
?

‘In here, love,’ Jess said, holding open a door to a room that was bigger than the entire downstairs of her house. ‘Have a seat. The others’ll be along soon. We’re just going to go over, you know, what happened.’

Dayna didn’t reply. She simply stared at the slim woman with her radio clipped to her belt and gold chain glinting at her elegant neck. She was, Dayna reckoned, like what she wanted to be when she grew up. She might not be clever enough to be a cop or a nurse or an air stewardess, but from when she was Lorrell’s age, she’d hoped to be a strong woman, a confident woman, a career woman – a person that others would look at and think:
I want to be like her
.

Thing is, they’d beaten it out of her.

‘Can I have a fag?’

Jess went to the window and opened it. ‘Lean out then.’

Dayna stood stupidly in the middle of the room and slapped her hands down her sides. ‘I haven’t got any.’ She pulled a face.

There was a desk against the wall and Jess rummaged through the drawers. Eventually she pulled out a packet of Lamberts.

‘Catch.’ She tossed over some matches too.

Dayna lit up and leant as far out of the window as she could, thankful they were on the ground floor.

The cops were going to ask her about Friday, that was all. She just had to tell them what happened and then she’d be able to go. The police would handle the rest, right? Everything would be fine. Except that Max would still be dead and her life would be shit again without him. She started to weep, but Jess didn’t see.

Stop it, stupid
, she mumbled with the fag shaking between her lips.

Tell them what happened. Tell them the story.

Was it really so hard to do? Didn’t she want to see those bastards locked up for good? Max would want them sent down. Serve them right for everything.

‘Come on, love.’ There was a hand on her back. Dayna sucked the last of the smoke and tossed the butt out on to the grass. ‘Time to begin.’

Jess sat her at the table in the centre of the room. Dennis came in with two other men. She recognised one of them from when he was at her house.

‘See you’re enjoying a cup of our finest sludge then?’ Dennis said. No one laughed.

‘It’s all right.’ Dayna had thought it was really nice, actually. Too hot still, but it was a bit of comfort other than the fags.

‘We’re going to make a recording of this interview, Dayna, and we’ll be writing down your statement, too.’ Dennis glanced at the others.

‘Yeah. Whatever.’

‘It’s going to sound as if we’re going over and over the same stuff, love, but we’re at such a crucial stage of the investigation, we don’t want to mess up.’

Dayna didn’t want things messed up. Not any more than they already were. She couldn’t stand it that Max had suffered everything for nothing. Had he lived his life a victim just for it to fizzle out and them lot get off scot-free? This was way more than bullying. Bullying, Dayna knew, was something that schools had to harp on about and have written policies for. It was something that parents talked about in the primary school playground but then closed their eyes to at high school. Bullying was a bit of a nuisance if your kid came home with a ripped sweater or complaining that they’d lost their lunch money again. Bullying was a chat with the headmaster, a promise it was just a phase, being sorted.

In all of it, they’d done nothing wrong, her and Max. Just chatted, smoked, snogged, been friends and . . . and stuff.

‘I’ll help in any way I can,’ she said loudly. The detectives looked up from their papers. ‘I want you to catch them. I will help you.’ She sipped her chocolate; for brown sludge, it tasted mighty good.

 

Carrie couldn’t go home. It wasn’t a place for her any more. There was Max’s stuff to face – the food he’d shoved in the refrigerator that she moaned about and chucked out, his toothbrush in the bathroom, his coat and spare trainers lying in the hall, and his bike in the garage. Martha would have to deal with it. She could see no time in any of her bleak future when she would feel strong enough to take care of these things. It wasn’t just that he was dead – hell, she’d dealt with enough bereaved families to know that a tiny semblance of normal life eventually returns. Eventually. No, it was more that he
shouldn’t
have been dead, that if she or Brody had paid more attention, had noticed even the tiniest clue about their son and who he was mixing with, the kind of life he was living, he would still be alive. She felt sure of it. They’d both been utterly blind and she couldn’t stand it.

‘Take me back to that girl’s estate. I want to see her again.’

‘Carrie, I don’t think—’

‘Fine. Then I’ll drive myself.’

‘That’s not a good—’

‘Leah.’ Carrie’s voice bit out. ‘Do you remember when we were at university and my father died?’

Leah gripped the wheel tightly as they stop-started through traffic. ‘Yes. You were a mess after the funeral. Trying to act as if you didn’t care.’

‘And I didn’t even love my father.’

‘You had issues.’ Leah edged the car forward. ‘I helped you come to terms with a few things.’

‘Yes, you did.’ Suddenly Carrie was sitting sideways, facing Leah, speaking urgently as if she had everything to live for. ‘You sat through the long nights with me, talking, going over and over my childhood, trying to help me figure out exactly what it was I’d done wrong, why my father went out of his way to pretend I didn’t exist.’ She reached out and touched her hand. ‘Then you took me back to the places we’d lived, arranged to go inside the old army accommodation. Hell, do you remember when we went to that caravan park in Wales so I could face everything, work it all out? It was all about knowing what I’d done wrong.’

‘But Carrie,’ Leah said, braking. ‘You hadn’t done anything wrong. You know that. You accept that now.’

A year of therapy had seen to it that some kind of conclusion and peace had been reached inside a head scratched out by her father’s nit-picking nails. And Leah had helped more than she could know.