The Disappeared (3 page)

I turn my head to the side and look up at the flat owner. It’s an old woman. Her birdlike head is cocked in the direction of the door. She’s completely still, with her hands slightly raised as if she’s waiting for them to come bursting in. I’ve got to hide. I roll over to look around the room. It’s tiny. The painted walls are flaking and there’s a purple-black bloom of mould across the ceiling. There’s a cupboard too low and narrow for me to hide in, a stove, a table, and a rickety bed. I crawl under the bed and press myself against the wall. There’s another shout from outside and the sound of the door at the top of the stairs swinging back so hard that it cracks against the wall. Then it’s quiet. I watch the old woman’s feet cross the room to the window. Outside, a car squeals away at high speed.

‘They’re gone,’ she says.

I wriggle out. It’s hard to get to my feet. My bones feel broken, my skin feels split open across my back, and somehow my head seems swollen to twice its size. I have an overwhelming urge to lie down on the bed and sleep for a long time.

‘You’ve to go now,’ the woman says, watching me carefully.

Go? Go out there?
My mouth drops open. Everything is wrong and no one will help me.

The woman looks away. ‘You’ve to go now,’ she repeats.

I can’t find the words to tell her that she can’t do this to me. When she turns back I can only stare at her.

‘We’ve been told,’ she says. ‘Not to be opening the door. They say sometimes one of them gets out of the Wilderness. More animal than man they say they are.’ She looks me up and down. ‘I’m not to be talking to you. Do you understand?’

I don’t understand. Who would tell her to ignore something terrible happening outside her own front door? ‘But I’m not from the Wilderness,’ I say.

She doesn’t answer.

‘Call the police.’ I realise as I’m saying it that she doesn’t have a communicator in her room.

‘Call the police!’ she says. ‘Then they’d be knowing I didn’t do the thing they telled me to do.’

The old woman is clearly mad. Paranoid. Prone to conspiracy theories. Who are this ‘they’ she keeps talking about? My head is swimming. I’m too battered to try to get this straight.

‘I don’t want to be all unkind,’ she says, putting out a hand, but dropping it before it touches mine. ‘I’m an old woman. I don’t want trouble now. You’ve best to go.’ She looks at the door.

I shake my head. I find myself walking towards the door. I can’t believe she won’t help me.

I stop. She
has
helped me. If she hadn’t brought me in here, I’d be dead by now. ‘Thank you,’ I say.

She gives an almost imperceptible nod, but her eyes are still on the door, so I leave.

I take a deep breath and sway my way back down those terrible stairs. The steps keep looming up into my face then shrinking away again. It’s hard to make my feet land in the right place. When I reach ground level I have to stop and throw up. I want to lie down, but I need to find a policeman and tell them about Wilson.

When I reach the row of shops I almost throw myself at the first person I see, but suddenly I’m conscious of how messed and bloody I am and feel embarrassed.
Embarrassed!
It’s so ridiculous that I let out a little laugh that quickly turns to a sob.

Not now. Find a policeman.

I spot a police pod on the other side of the road. I limp across and rap on the enquiries window.

A chubby policeman with sandy hair slides open the glass. ‘What happened to you?’ he says, eyeing me up and down.

I try to pull myself together. I don’t want to sound like a babbling idiot. ‘These men, they mugged us. They beat me up and my friend Wilson too . . . and they killed him. They took his currency card. They were huge, they had hoods . . .’

The policeman is frowning. ‘Where did this happen?’ he asks.

‘In the factory accommodation block, come with me. I’ll show you.’ I turn to cross the road.

‘Wait a minute, young man. I’m going to want some back-up if we’re going to the accommodation block.’

He slides his finger across his computer screen then taps it twice. ‘P.C. Wright, Pod 675 requesting back-up car for a five-niner at the East Hill factory accommodation block,’ he says.

‘Back-up car on its way,’ replies a voice from the speaker on the computer.

P.C. Wright gets up and makes sure his taser is attached to his belt. He carefully places his hat on his head, checking his reflection in the computer screen. What does he think he’s doing?

‘Come on!’ I say. ‘They’ll be miles away by now.’

‘What exactly were you doing in the block, sonny?’

‘We were delivering a package.’

‘Who to?’

‘I don’t know.’

P.C. Wright raises his eyebrows. ‘Do you know who it was from?’

‘Of course I do! Facilitator Johnson. He’s my teacher.’ I stand up straight. ‘At the Willows Learning Community.’

‘Where is it?’

‘Where’s what?’ I say, feeling increasingly impatient.

‘The package, where is it?’

I stare down at my empty hands. I don’t know where it is. I must have dropped it when the men were kicking me.

‘So you’re a Learning Community boy and your facilitator sent you to a factory accommodation block to deliver a package?’

Oh great. He doesn’t believe me. ‘Listen,’ I say. ‘My friend is
dead
. You’re a policeman. I think you should come and look.’

A squad car pulls up by the pod with another policeman inside. ‘This is P.C. Barnes,’ says P.C. Wright as he waves me into the back seat. I nod to the other policemen and finally we head for the accommodation block.

We stop at the front of the block, the side without the balconies, where Wilson and I came in. I can’t believe it was only an hour ago that Wilson badgered me into lending him my jacket.

I lead the men up the stairs. These horrible stairs; it’s like a nightmare where I’m forced to keep on going up and down them for ever. My whole body is throbbing. There’s a screaming pain in my jaw where I’ve lost a tooth. My stomach feels like someone has ripped back the skin and pulled out bits of my intestines.

‘This is where they came at us,’ I say when we get halfway down the corridor. ‘They took Wilson’s currency card and started kicking and punching us, then Wilson ran further along the corridor and they chased him.’ I lead the two policemen down the corridor. ‘I tried to go after them, but I could hardly stand and when I got out here’ – I open the far set of doors ‘– they all seemed to have disappeared, but then I saw that Wilson had been thrown over the balcony.’ I approach the rail and screw up my face ready to look at poor, broken Wilson. The policemen draw up on either side of me. We peer over the railing.

Wilson is gone.

I can’t believe it. What has happened to Wilson’s body? I make the policemen go down on to the balcony to check if there is any evidence that Wilson had been there. Nothing. I make them knock on the door of number eighty-seven, where Facilitator Johnson told us to drop off the package. No reply. I almost tell them about the old woman, but something stops me. Mostly because I know she won’t open her door again, but also because I’ve got a horrible creeping sense that maybe there’s some truth in what she was saying. So we trudge down the steps again. P.C. Wright turns to me.

‘Listen, son, I don’t know exactly what happened to you . . .’ He eyes my swollen face.

‘I told you those men killed—’

‘And I’m not sure that I want to,’ he interrupts. ‘We all know that there are some things it’s best to leave the police out of.’

My mouth falls open. I bloody well don’t know that. ‘I was under the impression that the police were here to safeguard the people and to arrest criminals – but you don’t seem to want to do either of those things,’ I say.

‘I’ve seen no evidence of a crime, smart man.’

‘Urrr!’
I slam my fist down on to my thigh. ‘This is ridiculous.’

P.C. Wright takes a step towards me and P.C. Barnes puts his hand on his taser.

‘Listen, boy,’ P.C. Wright says. ‘I’m sorry about your friend, or whatever it was that you think happened, but we don’t get involved in factory worker fights, okay?’

Factory worker fights?
He thinks I work in a factory
. And live in an accommodation block like some moron.

‘I am
not
from a factory,’ I say.

He takes a step back. ‘You’re not . . . Wilderness are you?’

‘No! My name is Jackson and, I told you before, my facilitator sent me here. I belong to the Willows Learning Community,’ I say drawing myself up. ‘I’ve got an AEP score of 98.5.’

‘98.5 is it?’ he says, but at least he takes his hand off his taser.

Obviously appealing to sense is going to get me further than anger.

‘Officers, I appreciate that my appearance is rather unkempt,’ I say. ‘And I understand that you don’t want unsupervised kids roaming about. But I can assure that I am a Learning Community student.’

‘He can’t be a worker,’ P.C. Barnes says to P.C. Wright. ‘They’ve all got security chips fitted so he wouldn’t have been able to get out of the factory compound gates to come to your booth.’

‘If you would just give me a lift back to my Learning Community we can sort all this out quickly,’ I say.

P.C. Wright sniffs. ‘Well, I suppose it can’t hurt,’ he says.

P.C. Wright takes me by the elbow and guides me into the car. ‘What’s your surname, Jackson?’ he asks. He and P.C. Barnes climb into the front seats.

‘Jackson is my surname. But that’s what they call me at the Learning Community.’

P.C. Barnes turns round to look at me.

‘Well they do,’ I say. ‘Everyone is called by their surname.’

‘Got some funny ideas those brainer types. I heard they all wear dresses to eat their dinner, even the men,’ P.C. Wright says to P.C. Barnes.

‘Not
dresses
, robes. And that’s only on Fridays.’ I say.

‘Oh, just on Fridays. Do they save the frilly pinnies for special occasions?’ laughs P.C. Barnes.

‘I’m sure the
Second Class
Learning Community you went to had its own traditions,’ I say, coldly.

P.C. Wright coughs. ‘Yes, of course. And that’s quite right, isn’t it, Barnes?’

He doesn’t answer.

‘That’s how it should be,’ P.C. Wright goes on. ‘We all fit in somewhere, don’t we?’

It’s good to hear him talking sense and sounding like a proper policeman. Maybe he can stop those men who killed Wilson after all.

When we draw up at the Willows, P.C. Barnes sucks in his breath. ‘Fancy,’ he says.

I stare out the window and try to see it through the policemen’s eyes. I suppose it’s a nice enough building. It’s old, grey stone with big bay windows. There’s a stained-glass rose window above the door. Around the side there are greenhouses and on the left is a tennis court . . . But it’s just a house really. I don’t know why he called it fancy.

‘Come on,’ I say. I’m desperate to get inside so Facilitator Johnson can make them do something about Wilson. We’ve wasted so much time already.

I still ache all over from my beating and my head is throbbing, but I rush up the drive and P.C. Wright and P.C. Barnes follow behind. I notice neither of them tries to hold on to my elbow now. I dash into the entrance hall, but they stop outside the front door. P.C. Wright straightens his jacket and takes off his hat. He widens his eyes at P.C. Barnes until he does the same.

‘Mrs Clark—’ I say to the receptionist, but before she answers me, P.C. Wright arrives at my shoulder and interrupts.

‘Ah . . . ahem. Got one of your pupils here. If it’s not too much of an inconvenience, could I have a word with who-ever’s in charge?’ He makes a weird little bob like a bow.

Mrs Clark’s eyes flick sideways to me. I smile, but she doesn’t smile back.

‘One moment,’ she says. ‘I’ll fetch Facilitator Johnson.’ She disappears.

I jiggle from foot to foot. Why won’t anyone hurry up? P.C. Barnes gives me a smile.

‘Nice place,’ he says. He walks behind the desk and leans over to get a closer look at the computer.

‘Stand still, man,’ hisses P.C. Wright.

P.C. Barnes slowly pulls up straight, but his eyes roll around, taking in the Creativity class’s tapestry hanging on the wall and the wooden staircase carved with fruit and vines.

P.C. Wright is sweating. He mutters something like, ‘Not really our jurisdiction . . .’ and smacks down P.C. Barnes’s arm when he stretches it out to touch the tapestry.

Finally, Facilitator Johnson appears with a serious expression. I wonder if he’s already heard about Wilson.

‘Sir, something terrible has happened,’ I say, rushing up to him.

He takes a step backwards.

‘Wilson and I took your package to the block and we were attacked and –’ a sob escapes me ‘– they . . . Wilson’s dead.’

Facilitator Johnson’s forehead creases. He moves his lips several times before he finally says, ‘Who’s Wilson?’ He looks up at P.C. Wright and then back to me. ‘And who are you?’