Cath Staincliffe - Split Second

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

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.