‘What happened?’
‘Dunno really. When I got back here, I’d gone out for a few drinks and things just... happened.’
‘I mean what happened with the argument?’
Shaun looked at Jessica, then away from her again. ‘She blamed me.’
‘For what?’
‘Everything.’
Jessica was clearly confused. She looked at DI Cole, who also seemed slightly bemused. It was the inspector who spoke next. ‘Why did she blame you?’
Shaun closed his eyes and breathed out deeply. Jessica didn’t know if he was going to say anything or not but then a quiet: ‘Because it’s my fault.’
There were now tears in Shaun’s eyes but Jessica felt there was something important still left to be said. ‘Why is it your fault?’
Shaun spoke slowly and didn’t look up from a spot on the table he seemed fixated on. ‘When Dad left, we all held it together pretty well really. It was hard but mum managed to keep us all together in the house. Then... everything fell apart because of me.’
Jessica had shifted on to the edge of her seat and leant in towards the table. ‘What did you do?’
Shaun wiped his eyes with his sleeve and looked up towards her. ‘I can’t tell you.’
‘You can.’
‘I can’t. I’m about to get out. I want to sort things out with Em and have a normal life.’
‘Shaun...’ The prisoner looked up at Jessica, meeting her eyes. ‘Someone killed your mother last week and whatever you have to say could be the key thing in finding out who that was.’
Shaun closed his eyes and breathed out then opened them again and looked directly at Jessica. His eyes narrowed slightly and he said two words. He spoke softly but the words were clear. DI Cole stopped writing and gasped. ‘Nigel Collins.’
FIVE YEARS, TEN MONTHS AGO
Shaun may have been one of the oldest but he struggled to keep up with the other three boys. They laughed and whooped as they raced across the patch of wasteland, cluttered with rocks, scrap metal and open patches of grass. Before he had left, Shaun’s dad had told him a while back that this area used to be home to a few factories but they were now long gone. Scott lay the way. He was the youngest but also the fastest, hurdling a displaced paving slab and willing the rest of them on.
Jon was next in line, the oldest of the four but also the quietest. He was the only one not cheering as they raced. He carefully watched his own footing, not wanting to fall and be laughed at by the others. Jamo followed him, energetic and excited, aping Scott’s calls and over-exaggerating the jumps. Shaun was at the back, out-of-breath but desperate not to show it. He copied the shouts too, not wanting to be left out.
He had struggled to make friends, especially after his dad left. The other kids took the mickey at school and, even though Scott did the same, he at least didn’t mind Shaun hanging around with them. Shaun did his best to fit in, doing their dares and stealing chocolate bars from the local shop plus knocking on those old people’s front doors before legging it. There was even a trick they pulled where Scott led flat on top of some guy’s porch then knocked on the door from above. The chap kept storming out front but couldn’t see anyone and was fuming. Shaun felt a little bad watching from the trees nearby but at least his friends weren’t laughing at him.
The four of them were bonded not by age but by boredom. It didn’t matter what year you were in at school when it came to booting a football around.
In every way imaginable, Scott would have been the kid who followed the others. Outwardly he was quieter, while he was certainly smaller and younger. Most people who saw their group probably thought that but Jon, Jamo and Shaun knew different; Scott was the cool kid. He was the one with the sharp comebacks and the one who bunked off when it was sunny. He fought their battles for them as he was the one older kids thought they could pick on first but would end up paying a price for doing so. He was vicious and scary but reassuring at the same time, the type of kid you would rather be friends with than an enemy of.
The group tore across the concrete land, watching as the older kid they were chasing ran into an abandoned building which Shaun guessed was once part of the factory. Scott had stopped running and the other three had now caught him. The building was made of huge grey bricks, while a lot of the plaster that would have once covered it lay in dusty piles around the floor. Moss had begun to cover the lower part of it. The sun bounced off the white concrete ground, leaving them all squinting as they looked ahead. The space the other kid had run through had no actual door, the rotting wooden frame having splintered at the top.
‘We’ve got him now,’ Scott said. ‘The door at the back is all blocked off.’
Shaun looked nervously at Jon next to him, neither of them wanting to say anything.
‘Niiiiiiiiigelllllllll,’ called Jamo loudly. Scott laughed, while Shaun and Jon joined in half-heartedly too.
Scott walked towards the entrance with the three of them behind him. Jamo was still calling Nigel’s name out loudly. Inside the building, the light levels dropped significantly and Shaun found himself blinking to readjust. Outside it was bright and sunny while inside the only light came through the partially destroyed roof. Patches of the floor were illuminated, while piles of rubble flanked the walls. At first Shaun couldn’t see anyone else in the room. He wondered if perhaps there was a second way out after all or if they had somehow been mistaken when they thought they saw the older kid run into this building?
He hoped there was a second exit but then saw a silhouette of a figure towards the back of the room crouching behind some of the rubble. He thought he heard a faint whimpering noise but no one else reacted. Jamo was still taunting. ‘Niiiiiiiiigelllllllll.’
Shaun wondered if he was the only person who had seen the shadow at the end. He said nothing as the four of them scanned their surroundings. Scott’s screwed-up face snarled as he looked from corner to corner, his features only half-visible because of the light from the doorway. ‘Anyone see him?’
Shaun said nothing. Scott signalled for Shaun and Jon to head towards the far end, the darker part where Shaun had seen the shape. ‘You two look down there, me and Jamo will check round here and make sure he doesn’t get back out the door,’ Scott said.
The room was fairly large but seemed so much smaller because of the rubble and wreckage. You could just about make out twisted pieces of metal and plastic that would have been tables at some point. Where there were holes in the roof, there were also patches of damp visible on the floor below it. Shaun could hear the two boys behind them overturning pieces of junk and looking under things. He heard Scott cursing and making threats. Jamo was still calling but the word was getting longer and longer.
‘Niiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigellllllllllllllllllllllllllll.’ Shaun found it intimidating and it wasn’t even his name being called. He felt his heart pounding and looked at the shape of Jon next to him. He couldn’t make out his friend’s features but could almost feel the fear there too.
‘You go that way,’ Shaun said pointing towards the back left of the building. ‘I’ll go over there.’ He was sending Jon away from the silhouette towards the other corner. Shaun continued to walk towards where he had seen the shadow. He kicked a few random pieces of concrete to keep up the illusion he was looking. He saw a small flash of movement again. Nigel was less than ten feet from him. His eyes flicked towards the older boy and he could see the faint outline of a figure behind a mangled table. He thought he saw the person shiver but said nothing. The other person either hadn’t seen or hadn’t acknowledged him.
‘See anything, Jon?’ he called.
‘No.’
Shaun could still hear the calls echoing around the room.
‘Niiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigellllllllllllllllllllllllllll.’ He could definitely now hear a slight whimpering coming from the person hiding by the table. Shaun realised he had been holding his breath. He stopped moving and risked another look towards the table. This time the faint stream of light coming through the roof caught the two of them. Shaun looked at Nigel and the panic-stricken elder boy stared directly back.
Shaun went to motion him to stay calm, to stay hidden where he was. He wasn’t going to say anything but Nigel’s eyes darted from side-to-side and he leapt up from his position. The thin boy’s frame charged into Shaun, the pair of them stumbled backwards into a smashed up cabinet. Shaun stayed still, while Nigel got to his feet. The noise had alerted the others but, as Shaun looked across, he could see Jon rooted to the spot.
‘Get him then,’ he heard Scott yell from the other end but Jon didn’t move and Shaun was on the floor. Nigel ran towards the door. Jamo had been taken by surprise and was still engulfed in darkness. Shaun could hear him struggling with something in the distance but couldn’t see him. Scott was clambering back over some old wreckage but Nigel was sprinting, head down in a straight line. Through the flashes of light that partially-illuminated the room, Shaun saw Nigel’s frame bolting. He was going to make it back outside surely?
Suddenly Shaun heard the crunch, everyone must have done. Scott had cut across from his position and rugby-tackled Nigel to the ground just feet from the door. The sickening sound of a bone or something breaking was instantly drowned out by Nigel’s scream of pain. Shaun got to his feet and made his way towards the front of the building again. He felt Jon close by while Jamo’s laughing was drowning out Nigel’s agony.
Shaun felt sick. As he reached Nigel, he could see the older boy prone on the floor. His once-green T-shirt was covered in dust and ripped by the arm, while his jeans were bent out at an unnatural angle covering a leg which must surely have made the sickening crunching noise. The boy looked dazed and was crying. ‘Please...’
Scott crouched down next to the boy and punched him hard across the face. ‘Shut. Up,’ he said. ‘Stop crying.’
Nigel had his eyes shut, head to one side reeling from the blow. He was trying to catch his breath, trying to stop the tears. ‘Do you know why we chased you Nigel?’
The boy shook his head and whimpered. ‘No.’
‘You shouldn’t have looked at my girlfriend like that, should you?’
Nigel was shaking his head, desperately holding back the tears. ‘I... I... wasn’t.’
Scott punched him in the face a second time, the sound echoing. Jamo gave a “yeah” Shaun just kept staring at the angle of Nigel’s leg. ‘Don’t lie to me,
freak
.’
Jon spoke. ‘Scott...’
Scott turned around sharply, standing all the way back up. He was shorter than Jon but stepped up to within an inch or two of him. ‘What?’
The light from the doorway left them each half in shadow. The only noise was a faint sound coming from Nigel. This was the moment for Shaun to say something too. If he and Jon stuck together, they could stop this now. He just had to open his mouth and say something...
Shaun Hogan was crying, not just small sobs but loud wails. The prison guards didn’t seem to want anything to do with what was unfolding in front of them. They couldn’t have heard anything specific anyway, given the distance from them to Shaun, Jessica and DI Cole. But they had stopped talking among themselves and were all four watching the prisoner, presumably in case his sorrow became violent. His cries echoed around the empty visiting room. Jessica slid a packet of tissues from her bag across the table. ‘Shaun...?’
‘I’m just so sorry,’ he said. ‘I didn’t say anything.’
The case of Nigel Collins had been massive news at the time and a total embarrassment for the Force. A dog-walker had found a teenage boy’s battered body on the site of an old factory. He was in a coma, while one of his legs was broken. He had a fractured jaw and broken ribs. His face was so badly beaten that the walker wasn’t even completely sure the victim was alive, let alone whether they were male or female.
Jessica was in uniform at the time and, though it hadn’t happened in her area, most of the GMP’s resources had been assigned to the case, given the severity of it. The boy’s face had been on the front of every national newspaper and at the top of every news bulletin. At first they had to find out who the victim was, which had taken a couple of days to discover in itself.
Nigel Collins was an orphan who had lived in a children’s home on the outskirts of the city since his parents had died in a car accident when he was eleven. They had left behind them nothing but debts and Nigel. He had no relatives, no security and no future and was too old to realistically be adopted, while finding a foster family was always hard for a child on the cusp of being a teenager. The home had offered him somewhere to stay but he had never fitted in either there or at school.
After he had been identified as the victim, the police had followed all sorts of leads, from former pupils at the school to ex-housemates at the home. No one knew anything. Nigel was a quiet child and didn’t talk much at the best of times. He lived in his own world with no friends and little contact with anyone other than the staff at the home. He had finished school at sixteen but was barely ready for the outside world. Staff had helped set him up with somewhere to stay through a housing association but, given his personality, he hadn’t achieved much else.
In the days after the media campaign, there had been plenty of reports of Nigel being harassed by other kids, younger and older. Some saw him on the streets and targeted the vulnerable, gawky loner. With his less than perfect social skills, even adults would tell their children to avoid people like
him
. No one could give any particular details though. The police had to assume he had been attacked given the nature of the injuries and the place his body was found.
When Nigel regained consciousness, he either didn’t want to – or couldn’t – remember any details about how he had ended up there. He couldn’t say whether he was attacked or not, let alone if he knew the people involved. A couple of the staff members from the home he had lived in as a child were brought in to speak to him but they couldn’t get him to open up. As they pointed out, Nigel didn’t talk an awful lot before the incident. Some officers at the time believed he just didn’t want to say anything but no one could know for sure. Five months after the attack and he had been forgotten. He was released from hospital and, as he either couldn’t or wouldn’t cooperate with the police, any case against the people who had attacked him was dropped. It was just another unsolved file in a large stack of them but with a victim who couldn’t even point them in the right direction. The media had long since moved on to other stories by then too.