Cath Staincliffe - Witness

He rounded on the nearest table, shouting. ‘Seen enough? Why don’t you buy a bloody ticket?’ He saw the bartender look across, ready for trouble.

There was only one thing left for him to do. Tell her why it mattered to him. Why in this he might have to be as stubborn as she was.

He caught up with her outside. The trees were tangled with blue and white lights, the parade of leisure facilities bristled with neon. The night was cold and clear but he could see only one star.

‘Vicky, stop, wait. I got summat to tell you.’

She looked at him, sighed. Her face washed out by the neon, miserable. She folded her arms across her front. ‘What?’

He shuffled from one foot to the other. The words in his chest like stones, hard to drag up. He blew out. ‘It’s hard,’ he said.

‘What? You having an affair?’ Her face was pinched, wary.

‘No!’ He wheeled away, eyes pinned on the sole star. ‘I want to do the right thing,’ he tried again.

‘The right thing is protecting your family,’ she shot back.

‘Wait,’ he said sharply. ‘Just listen for once, just bloody listen!’

She narrowed her lips, her eyes mean.

He found he couldn’t look at her when he spoke. Anywhere but. ‘I’ve never told you, never told anyone.’ He shivered. ‘When I was at school, there was this lad, Stuart. He was a bit slow, he was-’ Something caught in his throat. ‘He was just a kid. He wasn’t fat or crippled or mucky, he didn’t even wear specs, but there was something about him and he got picked on. Every day.’

She was still. Mike watched a bus pull out, a couple snogging on the top deck. ‘They’d wait for him after school, or at dinnertime. He’d never go to the toilets at school or anywhere quiet, sometimes he’d trail around after the dinner ladies. He got quieter, like he was shrinking, but it just made it worse. Stuart Little .’ Mike named the film. ‘Remember that?’ Mike glanced at her, she nodded.

‘That were his nickname – one of them. A couple of times the teachers found out and people got detention. Or the whole form did. Stuart never told. He knew it’d make it worse. This one day-’ Mike stopped. He didn’t want to say it. He didn’t want to tell her. His fingers were cold, he tucked them under his armpits. Shivered again. ‘It was after school. I saw them dragging him into the changing room. He was crying.’ Mike swallowed. ‘I went home. I didn’t go and tell anyone, I just went home. Had my tea, watched the box.’ Mike’s heart hurt. He tightened his jaw, tried to stop his voice quavering. ‘Stuart wasn’t in school the next day.’ He looked across at the traffic lights, saw them turn to green and the traffic move. He heard a girl’s laugh cutting through the other noise, high-pitched, squealing. ‘He’d gone home and changed out of his uniform and hanged himself from his bedroom door.’ Mike’s voice cracked. ‘And I still never said anything.’ Stuart’s father had found the boy, carried him in his arms out into the street, weeping.

‘Oh, Mike.’ Her voice was full of concern. ‘You were just a kid, too.’

‘I knew right from wrong. I didn’t bully him but I did nothing to stop them. I didn’t get help. And even when they’d driven him to do that, I said nothing. That was wrong. This – the court case, it’s a chance to do the right thing.’

‘It doesn’t work like that,’ she said sadly. ‘You can’t change the past. What happened, that’s awful, it’s really sad, but your responsibility now – it’s not to the lad that got shot, it’s to Kieran and Megan.’

‘The police can protect us.’ It was almost a howl.

She shook her head, her lip curling. ‘You’d take that chance.’ Like he was dirt. Like he’d failed.

They walked home in silence. Not touching. Mike felt soiled, ashamed. All the old feelings. He wanted to weep but he didn’t know how.

He looked in on Kieran, peacefully asleep, and thought of Stuart’s parents, the horror they would carry with them forever. Of Danny Macateer’s parents.

Vicky came in. ‘I meant it, Mike.’ Her voice was fixed, flat. ‘It’s your choice.’

He had no answer.

Zak

Soon as he asked for witness protection the atmosphere shifted. They put him back in the cells for an hour or so and then he was shown into a room with a couple of new faces. Plainclothes cops. Little and Large, Zak thought. Little smiled a lot but it was the sort of grin a wolf might have before it attacks. Large never smiled, he looked dead depressed, his mouth turned down, shoulders curled over. He had braces on his teeth. Zak thought he was a bit old for that; most people had ’em done when they were teenagers. But maybe the guy had been in a car crash or a fight or something and the braces were to help repair the damage.

Little and Large went at it for hours: going over what Zak had seen again and again, butting in and trying to trip him up. Almost like they didn’t believe him, thought he was making it up to get off the burglary charge.

They videoed him the whole time. Whenever he asked anything, about Bess, or if they were going to give him protection, they ignored him. Said they needed a full and complete statement first.

‘I’m not going to court without,’ Zak told them. ‘They’ll kill me, they know me. You got to sort me out, new identity, the lot, me and Bess and me mam.’

‘We do this first.’ Little showed his teeth.

Finally they let him have a break and he got given a chicken tikka sandwich and a bag of crisps and a Sprite. Even let him out for a smoke. He wished he had something stronger to take the edge off. He hated being in the cell, locked in. Brought back those sick feelings. Glimpses of memories he didn’t want at the side of his head like glitches on a screen.

He remembered the fly on his face, buzzing by his nose. Buzzing in his head too so he couldn’t think. Everything fuzzy and fizzy. But he wasn’t cold any more. Hot then, lovely and hot. Even with his eyes shut he could feel the line of sunlight, feel the weight of heat pressing him down, heavy as sand. Then the commotion, voices, banging.

Little and Large talked to him again and then they were writing it all out. They wanted him to read it, sign it. ‘It’ll be okay,’ he shrugged.

‘You can’t read,’ Large said like he’d known it all along. ‘I’ll read it, then you sign.’

It sounded dead weird; nothing that wasn’t true but not put the way Zak would put it. He wrote his name on the bottom. He was left-handed and he couldn’t help but smudge the letters.

Large looked at Little. ‘Could do a video statement?’

Zak groaned. ‘Not more.’

‘We edit what we’ve already got, play that in court instead of the prosecution taking you through this.’ He put his hand on the paper statement.

‘Haven’t said I’ll testify yet,’ Zak said. ‘Need some guarantees I’ll be safe.’

‘We’re looking into it,’ Large told him. ‘It’s not a soft option. If we go ahead, accept you on the programme, you’ll be relocated, you’ll lose everyone: friends, family-’

‘I’m not going on my own,’ Zak argued. ‘My mam?’

‘It’s possible. Even so, big strain for both of you. And if you break your cover, make a call, let something slip, do something stupid, then we can’t protect you. All bets are off.’

Little took over. ‘Also, we’d need you to be rock solid for the trial, stand by your evidence.’

‘I will, course I will,’ Zak promised.

He wondered where they’d send them. If it’d be abroad. Spain maybe. He could work in a bar and it’d be warm all the time and his mam’d maybe work there too, or at a restaurant and Bess’d get the leftovers. People’d be on holiday and give good tips ’cos they were having a good time and soon they’d have their own restaurant and pay other people to work and that. But maybe Bess wouldn’t be allowed in Spain ’cos of rabies. So somewhere else. Cornwall? Midge had been down there, he said it was like another country, well chilled and full of surfers and old hippies and that.