Adam is motionless.
I remember how anxious he’d been that his birthday cake would be forgotten and he’d miss that once-a-year singing to him; all the children clustering around him.
‘She told us that you went to get your cake from your classroom?’
He dashed up to me, his face one big smile. He was going to get his cake right now!
‘So you went to your classroom, which was empty?’ DI Baker asks, not waiting for a reply any more. ‘And then did you take the matches to the Art room?’
Adam is mute.
‘Did you use your birthday cake matches to start a fire, Adam?’
The silence in the room is so loud that I think my eardrums will burst with the force of it.
‘You just have to say yes or no, lad.’
But he’s stock still; frozen.
He’s standing by the statue of the bronze child, watching me running into the burning school, smoke pouring out and I’m shouting and screaming for Jenny.
‘We don’t think you meant to hurt anyone, Adam,’ DI Baker says.
But how can Addie speak with the noise of sirens and shouting and his own screams? How can he make himself heard above that din?
‘How about if you just nod or shake your head?’
He doesn’t hear Adam screaming. Just as he can’t hear me as I yell at him to leave my child alone.
‘Adam?’
But Addie is staring at the school, waiting for me and Jenny. The smoke and the sirens and the waiting. A child turned to stone.
‘I am giving you a caution, Adam,’ he says to him. ‘Which is a serious thing. If you ever do anything like this again we will not be so lenient. Do you understand?’
But Adam is watching us being carried out by firefighters. He thinks we are dead. He sees Jenny’s charred hair, her sandals. He sees a firefighter shaking.
Sarah’s arms are locked around Addie.
‘That’s the evidence? That he brought in matches? And that someone saw him?’
‘Sarah-’
She interrupts him, coldly furious. ‘Someone’s made him the perfect patsy.’
13
Adam comes out of the office, looking dazed.
In the corridor, he retches and then he runs, trying to find a loo, but he can’t find one and he’s sick on the floor. I hold him but he can’t feel me.
Mum is coming down the corridor. As she sees Addie she magicks that smile onto her face.
‘Poor old you,’ she says, giving him a hug.
Sarah has come out of the office now. She wipes his face with a Kleenex from her pocket, then bends down so that her face is level with his.
‘I’m really sorry the policeman said those things to you. Someone has lied to him and we are going to find out who, I promise. And then I expect he’ll want to come and apologise to you in person. I would, in his shoes. I’m going to talk to him right now.’
Mum takes Adam’s hand. ‘Let’s go outside and get some fresh air, shall we?’
She takes him towards the exit of the hospital and Jenny goes with them.
As I watch them leave I remember watching a history series with Addie while you were away. (It had that flirty ‘snogging-the-bloody-camera!’ presenter who irritates you.) During the ad breaks, they showed a trailer for a crime programme. It gave Addie a nightmare, so afterwards Jenny or I would grab the remote to turn it over until it was finished. It’s a little bit mad, I know, but I feel as if our old safe life is on the other channel, and we’ve been sucked into a violent and frightening one that we can’t escape.
I go with Sarah back into that hot, vile office.
DI Baker is writing notes on a form; a done-and-dusted form, I imagine, naming Adam and a caution and a job finished.
He’s irritated to see her.
‘I need to know who said they saw Adam,’ she says.
‘No. You don’t. You’re not a part of this investigation.’
‘Whoever told you was lying.’
‘I think I’m the best judge of that. Believe me, it gives me no pleasure to have to caution a child, let alone a police officer’s nephew.’
‘You said that on sports day the birthday child takes his or her cake, with matches, out to the playing field?’
DI Baker leans forward; his shirt is untucked, a droplet of sweat on his back glistens.
‘There is no point to this conversation.’
‘So the child would have to return to the school to get his or her cake.’
‘Where, exactly, are you going with this?’
‘I think the arsonist wanted to set fire to the school on sports day – maybe because the school would be virtually deserted. He chose the child who had a birthday that day, knowing that the child would go back to school to get their cake and matches – and could be made a scapegoat.’
‘This story you’re cooking up-’
‘No story. The school PTA make a calendar every year with a photo of the children who have birthdays that month.’
Adam gave her one for Christmas. All the relatives got one.
‘So this month has a photo of Adam and three other children with July birthdays,’ she continues. ‘Yesterday’s date has “Sports Day” written in large type and “Adam Covey is 8” in small type. It’s on the wall of my kitchen. I saw it last week then forgot about it.’
DI Baker is tucking his shirt back in, hiding the sweat.
‘Anyone with a calendar would know it was Adam’s birthday on sports day,’ Sarah continues. ‘Including the arsonist. He planned for the blame to fall on him.’
DI Baker turns, crossly uncomfortable.
‘Let’s suppose, for just one moment, that you’re right. Let’s go with that. So why didn’t Adam deny it? They’re guilty when they’re silent, aren’t they? In your experience?’
He’s enjoying taunting her.
‘“They” are adult criminals, not an eight-year-old child.’
‘All he had to do was shake his head. I even suggested it to him. But he didn’t.’
‘I think he could well be suffering from amnesia.’
‘Oh, come on.’
‘It is another recognised symptom of PTS.’
‘You clearly learnt a lot on that secondment.’
‘Memories of the trauma, and often a little while before or afterwards, are blanked out by the brain as a means of self-preservation.’
‘So he’s conveniently wiped the whole thing?’ he asks, enjoying his sarcasm now.
‘No, the memory is there. But his self-defence mechanisms have blocked access to it.’
DI Baker goes to the door, his back to her.
‘It explains why he doesn’t respond to your questions,’ Sarah continues. ‘He can’t. Because he simply doesn’t remember. And he’s an honest child, so he wouldn’t deny something he can’t remember. I just hope he doesn’t believe your verdict on him.’
DI Baker turns.
‘The only time I’ve seen genuine amnesia is when someone is drugged up to the eyeballs or has had a bash on the head. This is claptrap and you know it.’
‘Dissociative amnesia is a recognised psychological condition.’
‘Mumbo-jumbo reserved for slippery defence lawyers, not police officers.’
‘It’s called retrograde amnesia following a traumatic event.’
Being Sarah, she probably knows all this. But she must have brushed up on her knowledge to have the terms at her fingertips. That must be why she was on her BlackBerry as she waited for Adam to arrive. I used to get annoyed at the amount of time she spent on that thing.
But I don’t think Adam is suffering from amnesia but the opposite. I think he hasn’t forgotten the traumatic event but is locked into it and that’s why he can’t speak.
I have to find him.
I leave the office, remembering Mum saying she was going to take him outside for fresh air, her cure for most ailments. ‘If it was up to you, Georgie,’ Dad had teased, ‘I’d be prescribing half a kilometre of a healthy walk.’