Tania Carver - Choked

And he felt sad once more, sad for his mother, sad for himself.

Too ashamed to show his mother the scars, hiding them for years.

Hiding. Hide and seek. He was always the one to hide. And he was always found. But the way they played it was different. If he was found, which he always was, he had to do a forfeit. And the forfeit was always the same. He had to be locked in the cellar.

He hated that cellar. Every time they mentioned hide and seek, he knew it would end up in the cellar. But he couldn’t say no. He had tried it a couple of times. They had just hurt him.

The cellar was at the back of the house, right by the river. The water used to come up to the back of the property, and they had a boat moored there. His pretend brother and pretend sister would lift the trapdoor and make him walk down the wooden stairs. Then they would slam it shut and run off, sometimes leaving him there for hours. Even forgetting him completely on a couple of occasions. Inside, it was cold, dark and wet. There was no light, no electricity, no candles even. Just him and the rats. And the slow, swishing sound of the water.

Sometimes when he touched the wall his hand came away wet. His feet too. When the tide came in, the wooden walls would groan with the pressure, sometimes even seep. At first he had been terrified, thinking they would give way and the water would flood in, drown him. But gradually he came to accept it. Could even time how long he was down there by the tides. But he still hated it, it still made him cry.

He shook his head, tried to dislodge the other memories that were coming back. The times his pretend brother and pretend sister would strip him naked before tying him up. Tie him up with his legs apart. He would try to struggle, fight, get away. But it was no good. There were two of them, and they were both stronger than him. The pretend sister, she was stronger than she looked. And sometimes the more vicious of the two.

And then when he was tied up and naked, they would hurt him. It was a different kind of hurt to the cigarette burns. This kind made him scared to touch his own body afterwards. They would shove things inside him. Laugh when he begged or tried to scream. They just shoved harder.

Hurting him like that would excite them. They would strip off in front of him, do things to each other’s bodies. Laugh at his pain. They would push parts of their bodies in his face, his mouth. Force him to …

He closed his eyes. No. No …

Prison. Think of prison. In the cell. Alone. In his head. By himself. His own space. His own time.

He opened his eyes. Looked round. He had forgotten that he was here. In this room. He sighed. Relieved. Even this room was better than where he had been, back in his own head. Anywhere was better than that.

He looked at the mirror once again. Knew they were there. He wondered what they could see. He wished they could see what was inside his head. What he had just seen. If they had, they might have been able to stop it.

He shook his head at the thought. That was just stupid. If they could do that, they would have done it years ago. No. Some things just happened. And no one could stop them. That was life. His life.

He tried to tell himself it didn’t matter. Because even with that in his head, he knew who he was now. It had all come back to him. Even that.

His life had come back to him.

‘He’s getting agitated … No. That’s better. He’s calmer now.’ Marina looked through the two-way glass, kept observing him. ‘Looking at us again. Right there. Like he can see us.’

‘Pulling a gun on a kid?’ said Franks. ‘I’ll give him bloody agitated.’

Marina stood, arms folded round her body, staring at him. The observation room was small, usually managing to fit only two people at the most. Although sparsely furnished, it also served as a graveyard for deceased office furniture. The chair Franks was sitting on had seen better days back when John Major was in power. The desk he leaned on was scarred and pitted by the frustrations of a thousand investigations. The filing cabinet behind them a sixties period piece.

Franks took his eyes off Tyrell, glanced at Marina. She looked terrible. Her hair was unbrushed, her clothes dirty and torn. Huge dark rings under her eyes. He couldn’t begin to guess what she had been through the past few days.

‘Marina … ’

She kept her attention firmly on Tyrell, nodded to show she had heard.

‘Why don’t you go home? Get some rest. I can handle things from here.’

‘No.’ Still staring at Tyrell.

‘You shouldn’t be here, Marina. You shouldn’t have come back here. And you shouldn’t be working.’

Marina ignored him.

The bare-knuckle fight had been too tempting to resist for Franks and his team. As an added bonus, it had yielded a pleasant crop of minor local villains engaged in illegal activity, who were currently overcrowding the interview rooms waiting for various solicitors and mouthpieces to arrive.

In the process, though, they had lost Josephina and the woman holding her. They had, however, managed to get Tyrell, and had brought him straight back to the station.

‘Marina.’ Franks’s Welsh baritone was firm with authority. She turned to face him, reluctantly drawing her attention from Tyrell.

‘It’s after midnight. You haven’t slept in God knows when, and you shouldn’t be here.’

‘But Gary, I—’

He held up his hand. ‘Let me finish. If you are directly involved with an investigation, personally involved, then you have to withdraw. You know the rules. And no one’s more involved in this than you.’

She said nothing.

‘If we want a successful conviction, then we have to be seen to have followed correct procedure. And if I keep you here, then your role could be questioned. Am I right?’

‘With all due respect, Gary, I don’t care about that. I just want my daughter back.’

He sighed, shook his head. ‘And that’s exactly why—’

‘All right then, look at it this way,’ she said. ‘It’s just gone midnight, like you said.’ She pointed to Tyrell. ‘And he’s sitting right there, probably able to tell us where my daughter is. And you’re going to question him. Fine.’ She leaned on the desk, stared straight at Franks. ‘But look at the state he’s in. Mentally. Emotionally. You’re going to get nowhere. You’re going to need a psychologist. One who’s familiar and up to speed with what’s going on. And where are you going to get one at this time of night?’

It was Franks’s turn to say nothing.

‘Right,’ she said. ‘Apart from the one standing next to you.’

Franks crossed his arms. Set his jaw. It made his features look even more bull-like.

‘Besides,’ said Marina, ‘I couldn’t go home and sleep. You know that.’

He sighed. ‘Yes. All right. But on your own head be it.’

Marina managed a small, tight smile. ‘Thank you.’

‘And if this all comes back on us, I’ll tell them it was your fault. That you talked me into it with your … psychologist’s ways.’

Despite the situation, her smile widened. ‘My psychologist’s ways?’

Franks was reddening. ‘You know what I mean. Twisting my words and all that.’

‘Fine.’ She went back to looking at Tyrell, but a new thought struck her. ‘Oh. Another thing.’

‘Oh God … ’

‘My brother. He’s … God knows where. Somewhere in this building. Can we let him go?’

Franks shook his head. ‘He was charged with taking part in an illegal activity … ’

‘He was helping me to catch the woman who had my daughter. And that’s not why you were there in the first place.’

Another sigh from Franks. ‘Fine. Right. Yes. He’s an asset to the community and a boon to the force. Let him go. Right.’