Louise
Louise stared at the television, shock radiating through her like lightning. Police had released CCTV images of the three young people wanted for questioning on suspicion of Jason Barnes’ murder. They showed them getting on a bus. Two lads and a girl. The boys wore hoodies, and the girl’s face was obscured too, by the fur-trimmed hood on her jacket. Then on to the screen flashed a sequence of three e-fit portraits, and the voice-over was describing them. The broadcast moved on to the next story.
Louise was trembling. She grabbed her cigarettes and went outside. Seeing them on the camera like that pushed her close to imagining what had come after, when they had chased Luke down Kingsway, pictures in her head that she censored. Redacted they called it nowadays, didn’t they? Big black lines through intelligence and military reports. Big black clots in Luke’s brain. Redacted.
She smoked her cigarette down to the filter and tasted the bitter scorch on her tongue. She resisted the temptation to light up another, and went to the corner shop to see if the pictures were in the lunchtime edition. She needn’t have wondered: it was on the sandwich board outside. EXCLUSIVE: GOOD SAMARITAN MURDER – SUSPECTS PICS.
‘All right, Louise,’ said Omar at the counter. ‘How is he?’
‘Same, thanks.’ She picked up the paper.
‘Scum,’ Omar said, nodding at the front page, ‘that’s what they are, scum.’
It didn’t really help.
The e-fit drawings were clearer than anything you could make out on the CCTV that had been shown. The CCTV could have been anyone, but the sketches were distinctive. The big lad had popping-out eyes, it said he had red hair, and the other one had a mean mouth, he looked a bit wizened. The girl was nice-looking, a heart-shaped face.
Sian was coming into the shop as Louise was leaving. She blushed as she said hello.
‘How’s your mum?’ Louise asked, force of habit.
‘Not bad, but her legs are up again,’ Sian stammered. ‘If there’s anything I can get you-’
Louise cut her off. ‘We’re fine, love, ta. Thanks all the same.’
Back home, Louise made a coffee and read the article through carefully. Luke was only mentioned twice. Luke Murray (16) was being kicked by the assailants when Jason Barnes (18) came to his aid. And, Murray remains seriously ill but stable in hospital. He has not regained consciousness since the brutal attack.
She wondered whether to text Ruby, but decided to leave it. Ruby had stayed a second night at Becky’s, coming back in between to change and to visit the hospital.
Her phone went. Declan. ‘How’s Luke?’ he asked.
Louise told him there had been no change.
Declan had been into hospital once and it had been painful to see. He’d blushed deep red on arrival and hadn’t the wherewithal to chat along to an unresponsive body on a bed. He’d barely exchanged a word with Louise. When he left, she told him that as soon as they had any news she’d let him know and he could come visit again. Letting him off the hook.
Time was the two lads had been inseparable, egging each other on, both drawn to mischief, hot-headed, impulsive. Both prone to giving cheek. But in the last couple of years Declan had started messing with pills, and nowadays he was out of his skull half the time, spending his life in front of the Xbox cocooned in a haze of chemicals.
‘Are you at home? Can I knock on?’
Louise felt a spike of unease. Why on earth would Declan want to visit her? ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘See you in a bit.’
When he arrived, she offered him coffee but he just wanted milk. His eyes were watery and red-rimmed, his lips chapped, his hair straggly and unkempt. Louise felt a wave of sadness for him. He’d lost his way. His life a narrow rut growing deeper, his health precarious. He’d be old by thirty at this rate. And what alternatives were there? There was no one to guide him, to champion him. His mum as lost as he was. He’d never work, not legally; he hadn’t the discipline or the self-belief, let alone any marketable skills. It was such an awful waste.
He nodded at the paper. ‘You seen the pictures?’
‘Yes, have you?’
‘Only on telly.’ He leaned closer. ‘This one,’ he pointed to the bigger lad, ‘I think it’s Gazza.’
Louise felt her blood chill, cold spackle her skin. ‘Who?’
‘Gazza; his real name’s Tom Garrington. Don’t know him really, like, but Luke had a run-in with him a while back.’
‘When? What?’ Her rapid-fire questions disconcerted Declan and she bit her tongue as she watched him struggle to focus.
‘A while back.’
‘How long? When?’
‘Erm…’
‘Summer?’
‘No. Halloween.’
‘What happened?’
Declan puffed out his cheeks, released a slow breath. He looked hounded, head hanging low between his shoulders, eyes averted.
‘Declan, whatever it is, it’s fine. This could be really important.’
‘There was a party – this empty house off Braithwaite.’ One of the roads on the estate. ‘Everyone went. They was all, like, off their heads, man.’ He slid a frightened glance her way. ‘There was a lot of gear.’
‘Gear?’
‘Stuff.’
‘Drugs?’
‘Pills and coke and that meow stuff.’
Oh God. ‘Go on.’
‘That Gazza, it was his birthday, he was with this girl. Well, dunno if he was with her but he was next to her, slagging her off, she was crying. She was off her face, man.’
‘This girl?’ Louise touched the picture in the paper.
‘Nah. Anyway, he’s saying a lot of shit, how he’s going to cut her up and stuff, and Luke just tells him to pack it in. Then he’s yelling at Luke, like well stressed, man, abuse and that. Luke’s ready to thump him. Gazza goes for him but Luke trips him up and he falls in all this crap, like where people have left pizza boxes and dead drinks and fag ends and that. Well rank. Everyone laughs, man.’ Declan tugged at a strand of greasy hair, looking guilty. ‘Then Luke gets his phone out, “say cheese”, takes a video, like. We had to leave then. Luke sent the file round. Put it online.’
For this. For this they had kicked him half to death. Pity and grief and dismay crept through her.
‘Why didn’t you say anything before?’
Declan flushed. ‘It were ages ago. I’d forgotten.’
‘Was this other guy there?’ She tapped the paper.
‘Dunno.’
‘You need to tell the police.’
He sighed, slumped, stared at her, mouth hanging open.
She fought the anger heating her flesh and resisted the impulse to grab hold of him and shake him and tell him to frame his bloody self. ‘Yes, everything you’ve told me.’
‘I’ve not much credit left.’
She bit her tongue. ‘Wait.’ She dialled the number the police had given her, her pulse racing, her stomach knotted and a great weight crushing her heart.
You’d have thought the police would have been falling over themselves to hear what Declan had to say, but they kept them hanging around the reception bit at the police station long enough. Louise gave the gist of why they were there to three separate people one after the other, like it was a memory test.
Finally DC Illingworth, a woman about Louise’s age, glowing with a violent tan and dressed in a purple pinstripe shirt and black slacks, took them into a small room and sat them down. It was just a little box, table and four practical chairs, steel frames and padded seats.
DC Illingworth apologized for the cold and turned on the convector heater. Once she’d established who they were – Luke’s mother, Luke’s friend – and taken their dates of birth and addresses, she asked Declan if he would like Louise to stay or whether he’d prefer to talk to her on his own.
‘She can stay,’ he said ungraciously. Louise could see he was slightly embarrassed at being given the choice. She was relieved. Declan needed a steady hand to keep him on track at the best of times. His mind wandered, making him prone to telling rambling stories that never quite reached their destination. She wondered how stoned he was today and thought about asking for a coffee to sharpen him up, but held back.