Simon Lelic: The Child Who

‘No way.’

Leo fought an impulse to lean forward.

‘No way? What do you mean, no way?’

‘No way I’d steal a Lexus.’

Leo swallowed. He nodded. ‘Fair enough,’ he said. ‘A Porsche, then. Would you…’ steal, he was about to say, but the word – the direct question – did not seem appropriate ‘… how about a Porsche?’

Daniel rolled a shoulder.

‘Not a Porsche either?’ Leo slowly shook his head. ‘You’re a hard man to please, Daniel.’ And this, the ‘man’ Leo would have bet, earned a twitch of Daniel’s pale, cracked lips.

‘So what would you drive? Free choice. You’re in a forecourt with every car ever made and you get to take one home. What would you choose?’

The boy did not hesitate. ‘Subaru Impreza.’

Again Leo nodded. ‘In blue. Right? Like…’ Like? Like whom? The rally driver. Scottish bloke. Or was he Irish? ‘McRae.’ It came to him. ‘Colin McRae.’

Daniel, though, made a noise. ‘In white.’ He seemed to contemplate, then bobbed his head. ‘Yeah, white.’ He gave Leo a fleeting, bashful look. Leo, in response, picked up the drawing and crumpled it into a ball.

‘Just another half an hour.’

Detective Inspector Mathers strode on. Leo skipped to keep pace.

‘Inspector, please. He’s talking to me.’

‘He told you – what was it, Mr Curtice? The car he’d most like to steal. What next, would you say? His favourite serial killer? His top ten genocides?’

‘That wasn’t… That’s not what…’ Leo dropped back to avoid a phalanx of uniforms. He caught up with the inspector at a fire door. ‘The point, Inspector, is that he said something. His first words in seventeen hours. That’s progress, wouldn’t you say?’

‘I’m sorry, Mr Curtice.’ Mathers stopped mid stride and Leo’s soles screeched. ‘That’s not the kind of progress I’m looking for. Either he co-operates now or we proceed right away to pressing charges.’

‘But half an hour, Inspector. That’s all. What’s another half an hour when you’ve already told the world you’ve caught the killer?’

‘Come now, Mr Curtice. We’ve hardly—’

‘Oh no? Shall we ask the mob on your front steps and see how they interpreted your announcement?’

The detective inspector, a chiselled man far too ruddy for the season, made a motion with his mouth like he was sucking a boiled sweet.

Leo stepped close. ‘Be frank with me, Inspector Mathers, and I’ll be frank with you. This boy, my client: we both know the truth. You’ve got DNA that will turn out to be a match and you’ve got a witness – a fine, upstanding PhD student – who saw him fleeing the scene. He did it. We both know he did it.’

The policeman could not quite hide his satisfaction.

‘What we don’t know is how it happened,’ said Leo. ‘And we won’t, not until Daniel starts talking to us. Wouldn’t it be easier – for me, certainly, and for my client, yes, but also for your investigation – if someone could get him to open up? To give an account of himself?’

‘Mr Curtice. I hardly need remind you how time-sensitive this operation is becoming. It’s been four weeks since Felicity went missing; two weeks since the body was—’

‘Half an hour, Paul! That’s all! I don’t want Daniel to fight you any more than you do because we both know how that will end. It’s in everyone’s interests that he talks to me, that he trusts me. At the moment he’s tired and he’s scared and—’

This time it was Mathers who leaned close. ‘Do you think I give a fuck how scared he is? Do you think I give a fuck if he had a sleepless night?’ He pressed a fingertip to Leo’s chest. ‘How much sleep do you think I got last night? Or the night before? Or the ten, fifteen nights before that? How much sleep do you think the Forbes family got, or every other officer working this case?’

‘Look, Paul, all I meant was—’

‘You’re damn right we know the truth, Mr Curtice. You’re damn right we caught the killer and the world, as far as I’m concerned, deserves to be told.’ The detective inspector paused: a dare, seemingly, for Leo to fill the silence.

Leo said nothing.

‘Have your half an hour,’ said the inspector, waving a hand. ‘Come up with some story if you can. Just don’t try and kid me. You’re not here to do the world any favours. You’re on nobody’s side but your own.’

They were back, it felt like, where they had started. Yet Leo, this time, let his fingers drum.

‘Daniel?’ Leo watched, waited. ‘Daniel, please. They will charge you. You understand that, don’t you? You understand what I’ve told you? Unless you give an account of your version of events, they’ll decide for themselves what they think happened.’

The boy sat with his shoulders hunched. He shrugged, as much as his posture would allow – which was communication, at least, of a kind.

‘This refusing to speak. It does you no favours. I thought I’d made that clear. Did I not make that clear?’ His tone would not help, Leo knew, but it was becoming harder to resist. He looked at his watch, openly.

‘I can’t help you if you don’t let me. Your parents – ’ Leo tipped his head to the security camera ‘ – they won’t be able to help you either.’

A noise this time: something between a sniff and a snort.

Leo stood. He turned away and clutched his forehead. He turned back, a rebuke half formed, but Daniel was now sitting upright.

‘What’s…’

Leo waited.

‘What’s… that thing.’ The boy, for an instant, met Leo’s eye. ‘That thing you said. The thing with the letters?’

Leo shook his head. ‘I… DNA? You mean DNA?’

The boy did not say no.

‘It’s a genetic…’ Leo stopped himself. ‘It’s us. It’s tiny pieces of us. It’s incontrov… It’s proof, Daniel. Like fingerprints. They take samples at the scene and try to match it to their suspect.’

‘But it doesn’t mean…’ The boy glanced at the camera. ‘It doesn’t mean anything. That… that I did anything.’

‘It… No, not in the sense I think you mean. But unless somehow—’

‘And no one saw me. Like… there. Doing, you know. What they say I did.’

‘No,’ Leo said. ‘No, that’s true. But the DNA—’

‘She was my girlfriend.’

Leo stared. ‘Sorry?’

‘She was my girlfriend. She, you know. Loved me and that.’

For ten, twenty, thirty seconds, Leo made no sound. Then, ‘Were you there, Daniel? Is that…’ He breathed. ‘Is that what you’re telling me?’

‘I… Yeah. Sort of.’

‘Sort of?’ Leo stepped towards the table. He held the back of his chair but did not sit down. ‘What happened, Daniel?’

The boy shuffled. ‘We… we kissed and stuff.’

‘You kissed. Meaning, she consented?’

Daniel frowned.

‘Did she let you kiss her?’

‘I told you: she was my girlfriend.’

‘Daniel, I—’

‘We did it all the time. And other stuff. Proper stuff. Like in films.’ The boy’s expression was a challenge but as he spoke he seemed to flush.

‘Proper stuff? What do you mean by that?’

Daniel, this time, looked away. ‘Sex,’ he said and he slid a little deeper into his chair.

This time it was Leo who glanced towards the camera. ‘Did you have sex with her, Daniel? Is that what you’re saying?’

The boy took a moment to answer. ‘Loads,’ he said, concentrating now on his hands. ‘But, um. Not this time. She… she was worried. She didn’t wanna kid.’

‘She didn’t want to get pregnant?’

‘Right. So instead, this time, we did other stuff. Like, with sticks and that.’

Leo covered his mouth with his hand.