What She Saw (2 page)

At the ITU they met a female nurse, a beefy blonde in a bottle green NHS uniform. To Rosen, she looked like the bouncer at the door of a low-rent nightclub.

‘I'm DCI Rosen and this is DS Carol Bellwood. We're—'

‘You're here about Thomas Glass?' interrupted the nurse, whose ID badge read
STEPHANIE JONES
, and whose picture whispered time had been tough on her.

‘Is he still able to speak?' Rosen asked.

‘He's fully bandaged and under heavy sedation.'

‘Stephanie,' Bellwood said softly, and the nurse turned to look her way. ‘Did Thomas say anything when he was brought into the unit?'

‘No. He was ventilated.'

Rosen saw Bellwood's shoulders sink and felt the dead weight of her disappointment.

‘Can I see him?' asked Rosen. ‘Please.'

She looked hard at him.

‘You can see him through the glass partition. Follow me.'

They arrived at a window in the resuscitation unit.

Lying on the bed, ventilated and bandaged, was the missing boy. On either side of him, a ward sister and doctor were involved in calm but focused discussion.

Rosen took a deep breath and scraped the barrel of his inner grit. ‘Stephanie, did the paramedics tell you what happened when they arrived at Bannerman Square?'

‘It was straight into ATLS scenario,' she replied.

‘ATLS scenario?' asked Bellwood.

‘Advanced trauma life support. Checked his airway, red raw. Got him on the spinal board, into the ambulance. They ventilated him. They got what was left of his clothes off him and saw he had sixty per cent full thickness burns. The boy's fluid balance was wrecked so they hydrated him with a line into his left arm and wrapped him in cling film to stop him leaking to death. Then it was morphine and back
here. He's got a thirty per cent chance of living. Not good.'

With rising sorrow, Rosen looked through the glass. The probability was that Thomas's mother and father were about to face the most profound fear of all parents. And it was a fear that Rosen knew firsthand. The memory of his daughter's cot death, eight years earlier, was made fresh by the sight of the young boy. For a moment, he was frozen by terror, sorrow and devastating loss. His mind turned to his wife Sarah, on that terrible night, and the indelible image in his mind, the look in her eyes as she held Hannah in her arms, the moment she said, ‘She's dead.'

Rosen forced himself into the present.

‘OK, Carol. We need to beat it back fast to Bannerman Square. I need to catch up personally with this kid, Stevie.' Rosen turned to the nurse, one more thing on his mind. ‘Tell your head of security. I'm putting an armed guard on the door here.'

Bellwood's phone was out and she pressed speed dial. ‘I'll get onto CO19, David.'

‘CO19?' asked the nurse.

‘Central firearms control,' explained Bellwood.

‘And we want all your CCTV footage, interior and exterior, Thomas's journey into this hospital – everything you've got,' insisted Rosen.

‘An armed guard?' asked the nurse.

‘Whoever did this wants him dead. They've had him over a week. If you'd done this to him, would you want him alive and talking?'

2

10.32 P.M.

A
t the wheel of his BMW, before firing up the engine, Rosen made a call on his iPhone. HOME.

After the third ring, he heard his wife Sarah's voice, tired but relaxed. ‘Hi, David. You OK?'

He struggled to speak. ‘Well. . .'

‘David?' Her voice was laced with concern.

‘How's Joe,' he asked. ‘Is he OK?'

‘He's fine,' she reassured him. ‘Fast asleep in bed.'

‘Go and check him for me. Please.'

‘OK.' He heard her footsteps ascending the stairs. ‘Thomas Glass?' she asked.

‘It's looking bad.' Rosen wondered if Thomas's parents had arrived yet, if they'd seen their son.

He recognized the familiar creak of Joe's bedroom door opening.

‘I'm in his room. The night-light's on. He's doing that thing when he wrinkles his nose when he's content. I'll lower the phone.'

Rosen listened to the sound of his baby son breathing and felt a dead weight of anxiety vanish from him.

‘OK now, David?'

‘Thanks, Sarah. I'm sorry—'

‘I can only imagine what you've seen tonight. I'd be exactly the same if I was in your shoes.'

He turned on the ignition. Parental anxiety calmed, time took over as his tormentor-in-chief.

‘Get going, matey,' said Sarah. ‘Go!'

She hung up and, seconds later, Rosen was in fourth gear at sixty miles per hour.

3

10.47 P.M.

W
hen Rosen arrived at Bannerman Square, he made a mental snapshot of the rain-soaked scene. Officers, plainclothes and uniformed, outnumbered the handful of curious stragglers hanging around the scene-of-crime tape.

Claude House, the building overlooking the square, was illuminated on each floor, and Rosen was reminded how dark it could be on a wet night in the Walthamstow tenement where he grew up.

Gold – a tall, bulky Welshman, an ex-rugby player with a shaven head and sharp blue eyes – raised a hand in salute and pointed to his unmarked car. He was as tough as he looked, but equally friendly.

As he joined him, Rosen looked over at the teenage boy shifting uncomfortably in the back of Gold's car

‘Stevie Jensen.' Gold's melodic voice seemed to threaten to break out into song on each syllable.

‘What's happening with him?'

‘Local hero, he is. Two separate witnesses from the flats stepped forward to stand up for him, thinking we were pulling him in as a suspect. Saved Thomas Glass from that.' He nodded in the direction of a burned-out Renault Megane.

As Gold opened the back door of his car, Rosen thought he could
hear Gold's tightly fitting shirt and trousers squeaking against the density of his body.

Rosen gave the kid a brief, avuncular smile as he slid into the back seat beside him.

‘I'm DCI Rosen.'

He pulled the door shut as Gold took the driver's seat directly in front of the boy.

Stevie was good-looking, with platinum-dyed hair peeping out from the bottom of his baseball cap. He had light bandaging on both hands. He looked pale and nervous, like he wanted to go somewhere quiet and cry himself to sleep. There was a smell of petrol and smoke around him.

‘Thank you for what you've done this evening,' Rosen said, gently. ‘Are your hands OK? How are the burns?'

‘I just want to go home now. Can I? Please.'

‘We won't keep you much longer.'

‘He took my phone offa me.' Stevie indicated Gold. ‘Can I have it back?'

‘I told him to, Stevie. I couldn't be here myself because I was over at the hospital where the little boy is, so I ordered all phones to be confiscated and I'll tell you why.'

Rosen reached up and switched on the car's interior light so he could look into the boy's eyes and have a shot at bridge building. His first impression of Stevie was clear. He was part of south London's unsung majority, a downright decent kid.

‘First off,' said Rosen. ‘I don't know what's going to happen to Thomas, but I do know he's still alive and that's down to you. You gave him a chance.'

He paused and looked away, letting the silence do its trick. Outside, DS Bellwood's attention was nailed to something to the right of the blackened Megane, and Rosen's curiosity was piqued. She was looking at a low wall and the light from her torch picked out an eye painted onto the bricks. He looked back at Stevie.

‘Well,' said Stevie, nervously, nodding at the shaven dome of Gold's head. ‘Yeah, so why'd he pocket my phone?'

Rosen remained silent until Stevie looked directly into his eyes.

‘You're a witness at a serious crime scene. You could be the key to catching whoever's done this. You sit in the car, waiting, texting, talking, you pass information out there, and within an hour it's all over Facebook, and whoever's done this knows what you know. Whereas we'd like to keep it to ourselves.'

‘I didn't think of it like that.'

Rosen let the significance settle in his head.

‘My mum,' said Stevie. ‘She's a worrier. She'll be pulling her hair out.'

Gold turned his head and looked at Stevie. ‘Honestly now, I called your mum and told her everything was OK.'

Stevie looked mournfully at Claude House, and Rosen lay a hand gently on the boy's sleeve. Seeing the pleading look in the boy's eyes, as Stevie turned to look at him again, Rosen knew he'd be better off talking to him in his comfort zone.

‘I need to talk to you, Stevie. How about we do it in your flat, with your mum there?'

‘Yes please, Mr Rosen,' said the boy without hesitation.

‘DC Gold,' said Rosen.

Gold turned his head. ‘Yes, boss?'

‘Give Stevie his phone back. We're just nipping over to his place.'

4

10.51 P.M.

T
he door of Stevie's ground-floor flat flew open as soon as the boy rang the bell.

His mother gasped, looked him up and down, and threw her arms around him.

He wriggled in her embrace and protested gently, ‘Mum, there's a copper behind me.'

Rosen stifled the smile on his face into deadpan as he caught the woman's eye. Without a trace of make-up, she was a small, bottle-black-haired woman with sad green eyes that seemed too big for her thin, oval face. She reminded Rosen very much of his own mother.

‘You can be proud of your son, Ms Jensen.'

She nodded. Of course she was proud of him. She let him out of her arms and looked with some horror at his bandaged hands.

‘Oh my God!'

‘I'm all right, Mum.'

Rosen felt the intensity of Stevie's awkwardness and steered the moment away.

‘Can we all go inside, Ms Jensen?'

‘I'm going to the loo,' said Stevie, heading off to the bathroom.

His mother went into the kitchen to switch on the kettle, leaving
Rosen alone in the small living room at the front of the flat. He looked around the walls and read the dynamic of the family. There were framed pictures of Stevie at all stages of his life and in most of them he was dressed in a running kit. Stevie, aged nine, holding up a gold medal at a track event; Stevie, aged thirteen, first across the line. . . On the mantelpiece, there were gold-plated trophies and, at the little table near the window, GCSE Chemistry and Biology books were stacked neatly alongside blank revision cards and a stationery set.

The door opened and Rosen turned as Stevie's mother came back into the room. Rosen extended his hand and said, ‘I'm DCI David Rosen.'

As they shook, her hand felt small and fragile inside his.

‘Marie Jensen,' she responded. ‘Some neighbours told me he carried that kid away from the burning car.'

‘Yes,' said Rosen. ‘It was a brave and selfless act.' In the background, the water in the kettle began to boil, and the toilet flushed.

‘His dad died in a traffic accident when he was five. I think he must've thought about his dad when he saw the kid. He's a very feeling boy, my Stevie.'

Stevie drifted into the room, his eyes red with the tears he'd shed in the privacy of the bathroom. Rosen looked away and pointed to a small sofa.

‘You want to sit down, Stevie?'

His mother walked out of the room. ‘I'll fetch in some tea.'

Rosen sat on an armchair adjacent to Stevie and said, ‘I'm well impressed with your athletics trophies.'

Stevie looked directly at him, suddenly animated, distracted from the trauma of recent hours. ‘That's what I want to do. My coach said I could compete in the nationals.' The boy suddenly winced and stretched his fingers, dissipating the shudder of pain in his palms. A siren rose and fell in the far distance.

‘GCSEs next month?' prompted Rosen, nodding towards the window and the table of books.

‘Yeah. Working like a dog, me.'

‘What do you want to do, Stevie?'

‘Go to uni and be a success. Make Mum proud of me. Take care of her, like.'

‘You looking to join the police then?'

‘No way, man.' Stevie laughed briefly.

‘That's a shame,' said Rosen. ‘For us.'

Stevie looked questioningly at Rosen as he took out his phone.

‘You OK if I tape our conversation?'

‘No probs.'

Rosen pressed ‘record' and Stevie stared into space, as if reliving the memory in the thin air around him.

‘Just tell me what happened – everything, OK?' Rosen sat back, feigned relaxed-for-a-fireside-chat.

‘I was sitting at that table and, like, revising like crazy for me GCSE Chemistry, wasn't I? I look outta the window. There's a burning car on the square. So I went out. Next thing, the car door swings open and. . . It was a little kid and all I thought was,
That car's gonna blow, man; I've gotta help him!
When I got to him, he'd crawled himself into this big puddle on the ground, the stink of petrol and burning was, like, rank. But I grabs him by the coat and trousers, he was screaming, crying, I couldn't look at him, then, boom! The car went up but by then we were, like, safe and I lay him down on the ground and that's when I heard him say it.'

‘What did he say, Stevie?'

‘He said, “They're gonna do it again!”'

Rosen held the boy's gaze. ‘He said “they”? He definitely said “they”?'

‘Definitely. They. Not he, not she. They, definitely they.'

‘You're one hundred per cent sure?'

‘My adrenaline was pumping, for a second or two, my senses were all, like, super sharp. I could've heard a flea sneeze down Oxford Street.'

‘Did he say anything else?'

‘No. But I've got something to show.' Stevie looked nervously at the door, then he took out his phone and indicated to the space next to him on the sofa.