Davey shrugged again. "Nothing, really ... I mean, it's just all about respect and stuff. Power. You know ...?"
"No," I said coldly. "I don't know."
"You can't show any weakness, all right? If you want to be something, be respected, you can't take any shit." He looked at me. "It's simple, really. Ben got beaten up because he said no to Yoyo. Yoyo told him he had to stab this guy, and Ben refused. If Yoyo hadn't beaten him up, Yo would have looked weak. And everyone would have known it, and that would have blown Yo's chance to be like his brother."
"And what about Lucy?" I said quietly. "What was the simple reasoning behind ruining her life?"
Davey lowered his eyes. "It's just. . . it's what they do, Tom. I don't know ... I suppose part of it was to get at Ben, to hurt him, you know? But mostly ... well, it's like a power thing. They do it because they can ... because they know they'll get away with it." He shrugged again. "It's just what they do."
"And what about you?" I said coldly. "Did you want to do it too?"
He looked at me. "I tried to help her ... afterwards, I mean. I helped her pick up her clothes ..."
"You helped her pick up her clothes?"
"Yeah."
"Well, that was incredibly thoughtful of you, Davey. I'm sure Lucy really appreciated it. Did she remember to thank you before you left?"
"Fuck off, Tom," he said quietly. "You weren't there. You don't know how it was."
I didn't say anything for a moment or two. I was sick of talking to Davey now. Sick of all this stuff about power and respect and weakness and shit. It was nothing to do with anything.
I breathed in, trying to forget how I felt, and I said to Davey, "What are their names? The brothers ...?"
"What?"
"O'Neil and Adebajo. What are their brothers called?"
"Why do you want to know?"
I just stared at him.
He hesitated for a few moments, instinctively wary of telling me, but almost immediately he realized that it was too late for keeping his mouth shut now. "Troy O'Neil and Jermaine Adebajo," he said.
"Right. And who do they answer to?"
"What?"
"The brothers and the rest of them. The older guys ... the Elders or whatever you call them. Who tells them what to do?"
Davey's face suddenly paled. "No ..." he muttered. "I mean, I don't know ..."
"Just tell me," I sighed. "One more name, and then I'm gone."
"No, I can't... not him."
"Who?"
"He'll find out. He always does."
I held out my mobile again. "It's up to you, Davey. Give me the name, or I send the video."
He was looking really worried now — blinking his eyes, nervously licking his lips — and I could tell that he was genuinely considering his options. Which made me think that whoever this guy was, the one that Davey was so frightened of, he had to be seriously scary.
Eventually, though, Davey looked me in the eye and said, "Some people call him the Devil."
"Yeah? Why's that? Has he got horns or something?"
Davey shook his head. "It's not funny ... I mean, this is a really bad guy. Yoyo and the rest are nothing compared to him. I mean, if you think what happened to Lucy and Ben was bad —"
"Davey," I said wearily, "just tell me his fucking name."
"Ellman," he said quietly. "His name's Howard Ellman."
1010
Moral relativism is the view that ethical standards, morality, and positions of right or wrong are culturally based and therefore subject to a persons individual choice. We can all decide what is right for ourselves. You decide what's right for you, and I'll decide what's right for me. There are no absolute rights and wrongs.
It was still raining when I left the old sports hall, so there weren't many people around, but as I headed back round the rear of the main building towards the workmen's gate, I saw something going on over by the science block. Two boys and two girls were arguing about something, shouting and swearing, pushing each other around. I recognized three of them — Jayden Carroll, Carl Patrick, and Nadia Moore — and I guessed the other girl was Leona, Jayden's girlfriend. From the way Nadia kept waving her mobile around, shoving it into Leona's face, I assumed the argument was about the text I'd sent last night — the one that had made Nadia think that Carl had been seeing Leona.
I hung back behind a pillar and watched as the argument intensified. The shouting and swearing got louder, the pushing and shoving got nastier, and then I saw Nadia grab Leona by the shoulder and smack her across the face with her mobile. After that, everything really kicked off. Jayden grabbed hold of Nadia and shoved her into a wall, Nadia retaliated, scratching her nails down Jayden's face ... and then, as Jayden yelled out in pain and swung his fist at Nadia, I suddenly realized that Carl Patrick had a knife in his hand. I saw him lunge at Jayden and grab his shoulder with one hand, and then he just kind of pumped his other arm a few times, and Jayden staggered backwards, clutching at his stomach, before falling to his knees in a puddle and slumping slowly to the ground ...
And that was it.
Everything stopped then.
Carl Patrick and the two girls didn't really do anything, they just kind of stood around Jayden, looking down at him, looking at each other ... I even saw Patrick shrug, as if to say — don't blame me, it was his fault...
Which, of course, it wasn't.
It was my fault.
I dialled 999 in my head, anonymously called for an ambulance, then I walked back round the other side of the main building and went out through the workmen's gate.
I knew that it wasn't really my fault. I might have unwittingly caused it by sending the text to Nadia, but that's all I'd done. I hadn't stuck the knife in Jayden's belly, had I? I couldn't blame myself for that...
Could I?
I played it all back in my head, then anonymously sent the video to DS Johnson's mobile phone, with a text message identifying Carl Patrick as the one with the knife. And then, as I started walking back towards Crow Town, I tried to forget it all. I tried telling myself that it was no big deal, that people get stabbed around here all the time ... that you can't do anything about it, it's just how it is ...
But the words in my head sounded pretty empty. They were the kinds of words that Davey would use — it's just the way it is, it's just what they do — words that mean nothing. And maybe, in a funny kind of way, that's why he used them. Meaningless words for meaningless actions.
I stopped thinking about it then.
Lucy was logging on to her MySpace page.
While I waited for her to read my message (iBoy's message), I dialled Gram's number in my head. As it rang, I suddenly realized that it'd look a bit strange if I was walking along talking to Gram without either a mobile or one of those stupid hands-free/Bluetoothy things stuck in my ear, so I quickly pulled out my mobile and held it to my ear.
"Tommy?" Gram answered. "Where are you? You're late."
"Yeah, sorry, Gram," I said. "I bumped into Mr Smith, you know, my English teacher ...? He just started talking to me about stuff, and I couldn't get away. I'm on my way back now."
"You'd better be. Where are you?"
"Just passing the garage. I'll be five minutes."
"Right... well, don't hang around."
"I'll see you in five, Gram."
Lucy had replied to my MySpace message. iBoy, she'd written, i can't talk to you. please don't write again.