Lisa Ballantyne - Guilty One

Daniel entered the interview room and turned another leaf in his pad. The eye of the camera stared at them from the corner of the room.

‘They’re sendin’ your mum in.’

‘Did you tell them off? You’re a good lawyer, I think.’

‘You’ve got a right to see your mum if you want to. My job is to make sure you know your rights.’

Charlotte’s perfume assumed the room before she did. She sat on the other side of Sergeant Turner. Daniel felt sure she had been asked to sit apart from her son and to keep quiet.

As the sergeant continued to question Sebastian she said nothing, seldom even looking at him. She fixed her attention on her bracelet and then her skirt and then her cuticles and then Daniel. He felt her watching as he noted down the sergeant’s questions and Sebastian’s taciturn replies.

Sergeant Turner crossed out something on his own notepad and underlined something else. ‘Right. Let’s get back to where we were. Let’s go back to the adventure playground. Tell me again about the argument you were having with Ben.’

‘I told you already,’ said Sebastian, his lower teeth showing again. ‘It wasn’t an argument; it was a discussion. I said I wanted to go home, but he didn’t want me to.’

‘Tell me again about your discussion.’

Daniel nodded at Sebastian, to urge him to answer the questions. He wanted the boy to calm down. Losing his temper made him seem guilty, and Daniel didn’t want him to incriminate himself. Like the police, he too wondered about the boy’s sudden temper, yet he wanted Sebastian to remain consistent in his story. Daniel decided to ask for a break if the boy became more upset.

‘We climbed up the tyres right to the very top of the wooden climbing frame,’ Sebastian continued. ‘It’s really high up there. I was getting tired and I was thinking about my mum and her headache. I said I wanted to go home, but Ben didn’t want me to. He tried to make me stay out. Then he got annoyed and he was shoving me and I told him to stop it.’

‘ He was shoving you?’

‘Yes, he wanted me to stay out and play.’

‘Did that annoy you when he pushed you? Did you push him back?’

‘No.’

‘Did you maybe push him off the climbing frame?’

‘You had your answer, Sergeant,’ said Daniel, his voice sounding loud in the small interview room.

‘ I didn’t push him off , but Ben said he was going to jump. He wanted to impress me, you see. I was going home and he wanted me to stay and watch him jump.’

‘Ben was a little boy, not a big boy like you. You were really high up. You sure he decided to jump?’

‘Where are we going with this, Sergeant?’ said Daniel.

The sergeant cleared his throat and put down his pen.

‘Is that what really happened, Sebastian?’

‘Yes, it is.’ He was petulant now, slumped in the chair.

‘Are you sure you didn’t push him off? Did you push him off and then maybe start fighting with him?’

‘No!’ Again rage seemed to flash in the boy’s lips and cheeks.

‘Are you getting angry, Seb?’

Sebastian folded his arms and narrowed his eyes.

‘Are you angry at me because I figured it out? Did you push Ben down?’

‘I never.’

‘Sometimes, when people get angry, it’s because they’re trying to cover something up. Do you understand?’

Sebastian slid off his chair and dropped to the ground suddenly. He lay on his back on the interview-room floor and started to scream. It made Daniel jump. Sebastian cried and wailed and when he turned his face towards Daniel, it was contorted and streaked with tears.

‘I didn’t push him. I didn’t push him.’

‘How do you think he got down there then?’

‘I don’t know, I didn’t hurt him. I … I didn’t … ’ Sebastian’s screams were so sharp that Turner put a hand to his ear.

It was a few moments before Daniel realised that his mouth was open, staring at the boy. He felt suddenly very cold in the airless room – out of his depth, despite his experience.

Turner paused the interview so that Sebastian could compose himself. Charlotte approached her son gingerly, her elbows sticking out. The boy’s face was red with rage and streaked with tears.

‘Darling, please,’ said Charlotte, her nails hovering above her son. Her hands were red, the capillaries showing, and her fingers trembled. ‘Darling, what on earth? Please can you calm down? Mummy doesn’t like to see you so upset. Please don’t let yourself get so upset.’

Daniel wanted to run, to lengthen his muscles and dispel the taut screams of the boy and the cramped solemnity of the interrogation room. He went to the gents again and splashed cold water on to his face and studied himself in the small mirror, leaning on the sink.

He wanted to give the case up, not because of what it was but because of what it promised to be. He guessed from the way the police were hounding Sebastian that they had some positive results from the lab. If the boy was charged, the media would be all over it. Daniel didn’t feel ready. A year ago he had taken on a juvenile case – a boy accused of shooting another gang member. It had gone to the Old Bailey and the boy had been sent down. He had been a vulnerable client, softly spoken with bitten-down nails. Even now Daniel hated to think of him being inside. And now here was another child about to enter the system, only he was even younger.

Daniel was standing at the front desk when the detective superintendent came up and took him by the elbow. He was a tall man, heavy set, with grey cropped hair and despairing hazel eyes.

‘It’s all right,’ he said, slapping Daniel on the shoulder. ‘We all feel it.’

‘M’all right,’ he said. His breaths were there in his throat, like butterflies. He coughed as they escaped him.

‘Are you a Geordie?’

Daniel nodded. ‘You?’

‘Hull. Can’t tell with you sometimes, yer accent’s got London through it, hasn’t it?’

‘Been here a while.’

Sergeant Turner said that Superintendent McCrum wanted to see Daniel. He was shown into the office, which was cramped and dark, the light of the day splashing down from a small window above.

‘Bit tense in there,’ said the Superintendent as he came into the room.

Daniel didn’t mean to sigh, but when McCrum heard it, he laughed quietly in acknowledgement.

‘All we go through, but still we’re not used to this.’

Daniel coughed and nodded. For the first time he felt an affinity with the man.

‘The hardest thing I ever had to do. Watch that poor woman when she saw that little ’un – murdered in that way. Hard … Do you have children, Daniel?’

He shook his head.

‘I have two. Doesn’t bloody bear thinkin’ about, does it?’

‘The situation …’

‘The situation has changed. We’re probably going to charge him with little Ben’s murder.’

‘On what grounds? From what I have—’

‘He was witnessed fighting Ben, and we found him dead the next morning. We now have an oral report from forensics confirming little Ben’s blood on Sebastian’s shoes and clothes that were taken from the house. We’ll be asking him about this over the next few hours. We’ll be applying to a magistrate for more time if we don’t get a confession by two. We got the warrant for the family home this morning and the forensics team are still there … Who knows what else they’ll throw up?’

‘What about the CCTV footage?’

‘We’re still going through it.’

4

Daniel got up in the morning, dressed and went downstairs. Minnie was not there and he hung around in the kitchen for a few moments wondering what to do. He had not really slept. He had not returned the china butterfly when he brushed his teeth. He had hidden it in the room. He had decided that he was never going to give it back. He wanted to keep it only because she wanted him to return it. He didn’t even know why he had picked it up, but now it had value to him.