Split Second (12 page)

Emma liked it best when he was out and there was just the two of them, like on Sundays when he played cricket and his Tuesday practices, or Wednesdays when he played darts. What was weird was they talked about him even when he wasn’t there, passing on things he’d said, sharing his views on this and that, but it was like talking about some rare species. Observing its mannerisms and habits as though they were fixed and a fact of nature.

He should have been a critic, Emma thought. One of those people who write scathing, bitchy columns in magazines about films or celebrities or restaurants. Hatchet jobs. He’d be good at those. Because his disdain wasn’t confined to immediate family; he’d carp on about neighbours or workmates or politicians with the same acid tongue. The difference was he did it behind their backs, not to their faces. And he’d entertain his friends at the pub with his put-downs and send-ups. Roger was known as ‘a good laugh’. He could have been a stand-up comedian.

* * *

Her mum made a fuss of her and they had her favourite tea: lasagne and apple pie and cream. It would ruin her diet, but there was no point trying to stick to it over Christmas – and not when she was ill as well. She’d start again in the New Year.

Dad complained that there was a new man sharing his office at Clevely and Son and he wanted them to switch to a new type of spreadsheet package. Dad was quite happy with the one they used, he didn’t want to have to start fathoming out something else, but Mr Clevely was ‘thinking about it’.

‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,’ Mum said and doled out the rest of the pie.

Emma told them she’d had to go to the police.

‘Causing an obstruction, eh?’ Dad quipped, his eyes hard and bright.

‘I saw the student who was stabbed and the other boy, the one in the coma.’ She told them what had happened, quickly, so he wouldn’t make any nasty comments.

Her mum was shocked; she’d seen all about it on the news. She wanted to know if they’d caught anyone. Emma told her no.

‘It’s awful, that,’ her mum said. ‘He was from a good family and everything. It was right outside his house. Oh, Emma, I never liked you being in Manchester, and now this.’

Her dad snorted. ‘It’s everywhere these days, woman. And if you do have a go, half the time it’s you’ll get arrested. Charged with assault. People screaming human rights, never mind who the bad guy is. What rights did that student have?’

‘Disgraceful,’ her mother agreed. ‘Ted, next door but one, saw some kids knocking over wheelie bins, making a right mess. He rang the police, and do you know what they said? They didn’t have the resources to send anyone round, but if Ted wanted to, he could go down to the station and make a complaint. We’re thinking of setting up a Home Watch.’

‘Improve your house and contents premiums,’ Emma, on safer ground, told them.

They watched a documentary about rogue builders; it was shocking, it really was. Emma couldn’t stay awake any longer. Mum told her to take some paracetamol and drink some orange juice.

She slept fitfully. Her throat felt like she was gargling ground glass; she was sweating and throwing the duvet off, then she’d get really cold and shivery. She couldn’t stop coughing and spluttering, and she felt like someone had stuffed her head with sand.

Christmas Day was just like every year: drinks before lunch, presents after. All done in time for the Queen’s speech.

Emma talked to them about her work and told them that her last appraisal had been the best yet but there was a freeze on pay rises at the moment because of the financial situation. That set Dad off on his soapbox about government spending and benefit cheats, until Mum asked him to change the record. But she said it in a nice way, laughing, and he didn’t jump down her throat.

On Boxing Day they always went to her aunt and uncle’s. They had a bigger house and her nan lived with them now. They’d made the dining room into a bedroom for her and put in a downstairs shower. Nan was much worse. She kept calling Emma Claire. Emma hadn’t a clue who Claire was until Mum explained she had been Nan’s sister and died in her twenties of complications after an operation. Nan’s teeth had mostly gone and she had new hearing aids that made a swooping, whistling noise that set Emma’s teeth on edge.

Her auntie wasn’t any great shakes as a cook: the beef was leathery and the Christmas pud, which she did in the microwave – ‘Do you remember they used to take forever on the stove?’ – was so tiny they got like a teaspoon each with lumpy brandy sauce.

Emma’s uncle got a bit drunk and wanted to show them a DVD of a cruise they’d taken in the spring. Emma was glad when Nan became agitated and insisted they put the proper telly back on. Thank God they could leave early with Emma being poorly.

Her mum never said a word about Emma’s weight. Not once in all the time she was home. Usually she’d tell her she looked well or she was looking trimmer or even ask if she was still dieting. Emma took the silence as confirmation that what she’d suspected all year was true. She was still gaining. She just kept getting bigger, and nothing worked.

The two Kims were like straws, could eat anything and never put on weight. Laura was bigger but still only size 14. She would exercise more, Emma promised herself. She couldn’t afford a gym, but she would get into the habit of taking the train both ways to work and walking through town. She wasn’t going to just give up. And she’d have to be a lot bigger to qualify for gastric-band surgery. Meanwhile it was impossible not to eat over the holiday; the fridge was stuffed with food, so she just got on with it. Tucked in with the rest of them.

B
oxing Day and he found Val at the kitchen table, her chin on her hand, elbow propped, staring out to the back garden. Papers strewn about, Post-it notes and pens. It looked like she was preparing a report for work. She often brought work home, responsible for training across all the departments at the town hall. But he knew this current project was personal: the burial of their son.

‘Do you need a hand with that?’

She turned, took a breath like someone coming round from a sleep. Dragged herself into the present. The here and now. ‘No, it’s okay. Just think,’ she said, ‘they’re out there today, opening their presents, stuffing their faces, swigging—’ She broke off. ‘Do they think they can get away with it!’ Her face was mobile with emotion, her eyes burning. ‘How can they sleep? How can they function? The families must know.’

He thought of the figures in the garden, the lad rearing up and away from Jason. He rubbed at his face. ‘They’ll find them,’ he said. He went and stood behind her, put his hands on her shoulders, kissed the top of her head.

‘You okay if I go for a walk?’

‘Sure.’ She put her hand up to squeeze his.

His shoes were still soaked. He thought of the journey home on Christmas Eve, swigging the brandy, stepping in puddles.

Outside, the wind cut into his face, icy blasts that drove heavy, brass-tinted clouds across the sky. Frost glimmered on the fences and shrubs. Black ice gleamed malevolent on the tarmac.

He had no sense of where he was going, no route planned out. He just walked and walked until his body warmed and the aching in his limbs made him feel halfway alive.

The house was quiet on his return. On the table, Val’s lists. The bewildering range of things to do for Thursday. Val’s neat print marched in serried ranks down the page.

NURSERY – BUY TREE
TAKE WATERING CAN/SPADES
FELIX – FLUTE
REHEARSE BEARERS (COLIN, NICK,
HARRY, MARLON)
FEES FOR CELEBRANT
B&B DETAILS
BAR
DECOR FOR CC

She always made lists. Andrew remembered the long period of limbo waiting for Jason to come home from hospital. The first few weeks not knowing if he would or not. Val constantly refining the lists of clothing and equipment. Not daring to buy anything for long enough. Colin and Izzie had offered them plenty of baby gear, but they decided not to have it in the house until they knew for certain that Jason would pull through.

In the incubator they used special materials; ordinary fabric would have been intolerably harsh against his raw, fragile skin.

They watched him grow from a scrap of skin and bones and a flickering heart, the whole of him smaller than Andrew’s hand, to a young man with his dragon tattoo and muddy-blond tresses and lazy smile.

‘He’s so laid back, he’s horizontal,’ Val had complained one summer when she’d come in from work to find Jason, then fifteen, still in his pyjamas, scoffing cereal and playing on the games console. ‘Why won’t he get a job?’

‘He doesn’t need the money,’ Andrew suggested.

‘It’s not about the money,’ she said, ‘but the experience.’

‘What – working in a fast-food joint for crap wages?’ Andrew said. He was with Jason on this one.

‘He’d learn something. Customer service, how to operate a till. You worked when you were his age, didn’t you, at the golf club.’

‘Collecting glasses. Everyone worked back then. There were more jobs, less pocket money.’

‘That’s where we’ve gone wrong,’ she said darkly.

‘Hey.’ He put his arms around her waist, drew her close. ‘We’ve not gone wrong; he’s a lovely boy. Lazy as sin, but lovely with it.’

‘Well if he’s here all day, he can do more at home.’ And she’d followed through, leaving lists of chores, instructions for the washing machine, the hoovering, reminders about the dishwasher and tidying his room.

When Val surfaced, he expected her to ask him where he’d been, why he’d taken so long, but she just said, ‘Hi. There’s some minestrone if you want. Colin and Izzie called. And your mum rang. They’ve got someone for the bar at the cricket club.’ They were hiring the cricket club for the celebration after the funeral.

‘Good,’ he said.

‘Your suit. It’ll need cleaning.’

‘Right. I can take it,’ he said. She was doing it all. He knew keeping busy, tackling the practical tasks, helped her cope, but he could at least do some of the running around. ‘I can get the tree too. A rowan.’ He steeled himself. ‘Drop his clothes off.’ Just the thought of it, that they were picking out burial garments for his eighteen-year-old son, lit the anger inside. The anger was good, though, hot and clean and fierce. Far better than the fog of grey desolation, the marsh of despair that threatened to suck him under.

‘Okay,’ Val said. ‘They’re on his bed.’

He went upstairs and stood outside Jason’s door. He felt the rage burn, pushing his heart harder, searing his guts, curling his hands into fists. Then came the pictures in his head. Those fists slamming into the feral lad, smashing his face, beating him again and again until there was nothing left. Hands throttling the girl, choking the life from her. A knife for the bug-eyed one, plunging it into him again and again, watching the shock and then the pain and fear fill those eyes. Hurting them, hurting them so they knew what it felt like. Killing them, over and over and over again.

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.