Simon Lelic: The Child Who

‘But…’ Daniel shifted straighter. ‘There was someone watching. A perv or whatever. She spotted him. The girl… er… Felicity, did. She told me to get off and when I didn’t cos I didn’t see the perv she did this.’ The boy pointed to the marks on his neck. ‘By accident.’

‘By accident.’

There was a silence.

‘And then?’ Leo sighed. ‘What happened then, Daniel?’

Daniel jerked a shoulder. ‘I left.’

‘You left.’

The boy nodded.

‘And this man. The one you saw—’

‘I didn’t see him.’

‘You didn’t see him?’

‘Uh uh.’

‘What then? Only the girl did. Felicity . Is that what you’re saying?’

Daniel nodded again.

Leo dragged his chair further from the table. He lowered himself onto it and caught his elbows with his knees. He looked at the sole-stained linoleum. ‘You said you left.’ He raised his head. ‘Why did you leave, Daniel?’

Once again the boy shrugged.

Leo waited. ‘Okay,’ he said, after a moment. ‘What about Felicity?’

The boy, this time, turned away.

‘When you left,’ Leo persisted, ‘was Felicity…’ He coughed. He tried again. ‘In what state did you leave her?’

Silence.

‘Was she alive, Daniel? Was Felicity alive when you left her?’

This time the boy spoke but Leo did not catch the words.

‘I’m sorry, Daniel, I didn’t hear what you—’

‘She was alive. Okay? That’s what I’m trying to tell you.’ There was something in Daniel’s expression that reminded Leo all of a sudden what the boy was capable of.

Leo backed slightly away. ‘No, I know, I just wanted to—’

‘You don’t believe me. Do you? You’re just like all the rest of them.’

Their time was almost up. DI Mathers and DC Golbas would by now be gathering their notes, their props, their wits, ready to settle things one way or another but quite unprepared, Leo suspected, for what they were about to hear.

‘Look,’ Leo said, ‘Daniel. All I can say, as your solicitor – as someone who is here to help you – is that if you did what the police think you might have done, it would be better… it would be better for you to admit it. If you lie, and they catch you in that lie, the consequences – the punishment – will be all the greater.’

‘I’m not lying.’ The boy’s voice was taut to the point of tears.

Leo showed Daniel his palm. ‘I’m not saying… No one’s accusing you of that. Not yet. But things get confused. They get mixed up. It’s perfectly natural that you should be worried, that you should be scared, that you should be looking to find some—’

‘I’m not scared either!’ Daniel’s hands, Leo saw, were curled and bloodless. His cheeks were blotched with red.

‘I’m sorry,’ Leo said. ‘I’m not putting this very well. What I’m trying to say is, when they come back in here, the police are going to charge you. It’s either that or let you go and they’re not going to let you go. They have evidence, Daniel. Solid evidence. And your story… This story… It will only make things—’

‘You asked me what happened. Didn’t you? And I told you. Didn’t I?’

‘I did. You did. But—’

‘So why can’t you just tell them ?’ the boy said and the door behind Leo clicked open.

Something detonated againstthe glass and Leo dived. He peered up and saw only sky, as well as what looked like a bleeding sun.

‘Jesus!’ he said and someone, somewhere within the car, echoed it. The driver? Daniel’s stepfather?

Leo straightened and tried to see beyond the haemorrhaging egg yolk. The street, a somnolent sequence of shops until the corner before, had rounded into a throng. Young men mostly, Leo thought at first, and clearly in the wrong place, directing their ire in the wrong direction. These were anarchists, anti-capitalists, fascists, anti-fascists. Something was happening, obviously, that Leo had not known about – surprising perhaps that it should occur in Exeter of all places but unsurprising that Leo was so out of touch. He had not looked at a newspaper in days; not at a story that was not somehow connected to the case. And yet, here, there: a pushchair. A mother chanting as she held her son. And over there: schoolchildren. Three, four of them; two girls, two boys; his daughter’s age and – yes – in his daughter’s uniform. Not, like Leo, caught up inadvertently but bawling and baying like the rest of the crowd. Schoolchildren. Just schoolchildren. And as Leo looked it was one of the schoolboys who threw another egg.

Again Leo ducked but the missile, this time, missed by a car’s length. Something else hit, on the roof it sounded like. In the seat behind Leo’s, Daniel’s mother screamed: a counterpoint to the baritone boom of the impact. And, ‘Jesus!’ said the voice again. It was not the driver: a policeman and trained, Leo hoped, for this sort of thing. Daniel’s stepfather, then, in the back beside the boy’s mother. Leo turned, hugging his cheek to the velour upholstery.

‘Who are these people?’ said Stephanie Blake. With her eyes drawn wide, Leo could see gaps, like wrinkles, in her makeup. She had slouched in her seat and her skirt, too short already for a visit to court, had risen halfway up her nylon-trussed thighs. ‘Vince? Vince! What’s going—’

‘What the hell is happening?’ said Vincent Blake. ‘Where the hell are you taking us?’ He was seated behind the driver so had no choice but to focus his outrage on Leo.

Something hit Blake’s window and he spun. His pinched face turned pale. The man had a nose crooked like a brawler’s and a crease, across it, extending below his eye but there seemed nothing intimidating – nothing tough – about his appearance now. He slid towards his wife, forcing her closer to the nearside door.

‘Sit tight,’ said the driver and Leo turned back to face the front. The policeman, a youthful, earnest constable, was doing his best to appear stoical but there was tension in his grip, ten to two, on the steering wheel. ‘This might get rocky,’ the young man said.

It was an understatement. The crowd through which they had already passed was only the fringe of the mob outside the courthouse. There was a cordon of yellow-clad officers along the kerb but their line was bedraggled and beginning to fray. Just as the van – Daniel’s van – turned to make its final approach, the string of policemen snapped.

The protesters swarmed. There must have been two, three, four hundred people gathered and the men in front – and it was, here, mainly men in front – led the charge. The convoy – a police car, the van, another marked unit and finally Leo with Daniel’s parents – had been moving at a brisk speed but now the lead driver had no choice but to press his brakes. The procession slowed, then stopped, and the protest turned into a siege.

A dozen men, then a dozen more, surrounded Daniel’s van. They launched kicks at its bodywork and threw fists at the glass as though the pain they would be feeling in their toes and knuckles would somehow disseminate towards their prey. Someone swung a placard but in slow motion because with the sign it would have been like trying to swing an oar through water. The man turned it instead and used the pole end as a club.

‘Daniel!’

The boy’s mother had wedged herself between the two front seats. Her scarlet nails were clawing Leo’s shoulder but when he winced she paid no heed. Her attention was on the scene ahead: on the van, which was beginning to sway. Just lightly but the momentum was building, the efforts of the protesters coalescing. They would tip it. In a moment, the van would be on its side.

Leo tried to picture the boy. Seated between two policemen, would he be reaching for one of their hands? Would he be crying, like a twelve-year-old ought?